Repurposing Classical Myth and Medieval Bestiaries in Harry Potter

J. K. Rowling's 2001 book, Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, premiering this fall as a wide-release film, shows great linguistic and literary playfulness that may not always be apparent on casual reading. Rowling studied Classics at the University of Exeter and is well read in Early Modern, nineteenth-century, and twentieth-century British literature. Her writings display remarkable wit and erudition in introducing, or transforming beasts grounded in deep literary history. Many of her creatures are drawn from Greek and Roman mythology, from medieval bestiaries and related works, and from popular and Germanic traditions. A much larger proportion, however, including as many as 56 of the creatures in Fantastic Beasts, do not have any evident roots in any earlier mythology, but seem rather to have been the product of Rowling’s own zoological imagination.

Illustrated by numerous images from medieval and other sources as well as from the films, this talk will focus on the 19 creatures Rowling introduces in Fantastic Beasts and in the first seven Potter novels that have classical and medieval sources, illustrating the ways Rowling creatively modified these sources to produce memorable creatures of her own. An understanding of what Rowling inherited or modified, as opposed to what she created through her remarkable imagination, deepens our appreciation of Rowling's achievement.

John Friedman is Professor Emeritus of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and a visiting scholar in the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Ohio State. He was a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and was Herbert Johnson Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

To read more visit the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.