The Tales of Beedle The Bard - JK Rowling.pdf

2017

For many, fairy tales are meant for children and therefore representations of innocence. With that ingrained biased view, many once violent and sexual fairy tales have been simplified and modified to accommodate their young audience. Walt Disney has been known for the culprit in simplification of fairy tales. According to Jack Zipes, most of the storyline and plot development in the original versions were lost in their Disney animation adaptations. Worse still, these simplified and one-dimensional versions of fairy tales have been deviated greatly from their originals that some of the preaching purposes and intended moral values have lost. Most of Walt Disney's adaptations have been well-received and welcomed by the public, be they children or adults, mostly because of their simplicity and entertainment. However, psychologist Bruno Bettelheim concluded that simplification of fairy tales does not necessarily help children's development. This essay examines the work The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a spinoff literary work by J.K. Rowling who created the Harry Potter universe, and attempts to explain why fairy tales should not be sanitized with respect to their purposes and how the realistic aspects manifested in book are conducive to the development of the young readers. Index Terms-children literature, confrontation of predicaments, fairy tales, moral value, The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World, 2016

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series serves as a case study of the folkloresque. Her treatment of fairy tales in The Tales of Beedle the Bard, in particular, represents a complex portrayal of folklore that both resonates with and challenges folklorists’ understanding of the genre. In writing her own fairy tales, Rowling both makes conscious use of the fairy-tale genre and advances explicit commentary on that genre. This commentary not only reflects Rowling’s views but also indicates a larger pattern of social thought about fairy tales: they are apparently silly, irrelevant texts with little meaning beyond their obvious moral messages, and yet they hint at obscure truths that modern readers would do well to root out. We suggest two primary modes of engagement with folklore in Rowling’s work, which we see replicated in many works of popular media: one, the use of existing folklore to enrich a world of a fiction through intertextual reference (an aspect of the folkloresque mode of integration) and two, the metafictional use of created folklore (folkloresque portrayal) to comment on her perceptions of the genre. Metafolklore and metafictional uses of folkloric material provide direct insight into what people think about folklore. Regardless of the source of these views, be it commercial advertising or pulp fiction, they persist, and scholars cannot dismiss them because they contrast with contemporary disciplinary models. By considering works like Rowling’s, folklorists can endeavor to bridge this divide. However, as Richard Bauman puts it, “It can’t happen if folklorists shelter their work behind disciplinary walls” (1996, 19).

Research Article, 2023

J. K. Rowling is a British novelist and philanthropist best known for her seven-volume children's fantasy series Harry Potter (1997-2007). She published a collection of fairytales from the wizarding world titled The Tales of Beedle the Bard for the general public on 4December 2008. The final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows refers to the same book. Fairytales have a didactic purpose and uphold moral principles for their audience. Through the plot, setting and characterisation, the fairytales serve as an example to instil excellent morals in the readers. Characters in these stories are placed in precarious situations where they must make decisions. The readers can assess whether the decision made was better or worse for the individual and society based on its results. Furthermore, decision-making is greatly influenced by human values. Human values are those values that benefit humanity and contribute to the development of a peaceful and improved society. Value-driven judgements are better and more fruitful than those motivated by self-gain. It is vividly demonstrated in the selected text. The fate of the characters bespeaks how decisions made for the good of others can lessen any form of pain, while those made without regard for others' feelings can make the sufferings worse. The research work tries to explore the function of human values behind the decisions made by the characters in the selected text. Keywords: Choices; decision-making; human values of empathy, friendship, sense of community, non-violence, humility, patience; fairytales.

UWA Honours Dissertation, 2021

The aim of this dissertation is to determine the ways in which the Harry Potter series participates in the Bildungsroman and fairy-tale genres. I argue that the moral and emotional lessons Harry learns through his friendships and relationships, as well as interactions with corrupt government and media institutions, are more important to the fabric of his character than the educational lessons he takes during his time at Hogwarts school. Notably, Harry’s relationships with his friends Hermione, Ron and Hagrid teach him patience and kindness. Hermione’s presence is also meaningful as it encourages readers to engage in a gendered analysis of the text, particularly in regards to why Hermione, although she has similar qualities to Harry, is not permitted to be the protagonist of the series. Meanwhile, Harry’s difficult relationships with his parental figures and guardians, particularly headmaster Albus Dumbledore and godfather Sirius Black teach him about fallibility and loss. Harry’s readers, alongside the character himself, learn to navigate similar challenges and emotional issues, proving the importance of works aimed at children in development. This genre study draws on the previous scholarship of Martin Swales and Franco Moretti, who wrote extensively on the Bildungsroman, Georg Lukacs’ work on middling characters, and Bruno Bettelheim and Jack Zipes’ seminal works concerning fairy-tales, amongst others. Keywords: Harry Potter, Bildungsroman, Fairy-Tales, Children’s Literature, Adolescent Literature

Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, 2011

HOLLY BLACKFORD ''No book would have given [Tom Riddle] that information.'' -Dumbledore, Half-Blood Prince The penultimate novel in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince grapples with the fundamental challenge of uncovering the conditions under which a child can be understood as evil. By ''evil,'' I mean not a simple binary of good versus evil, as charged by critic Jennifer Sattaur, but a complicated, motivated evil arising from the deepest unmet longings of childhood. In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore gives Harry private lessons in which he pieces together a history of Lord Voldemort's deprived childhood and development as the orphan Tom Riddle, effectively acting the part of a Freudian analyst who seeks an explanatory reminiscence to account for and ultimately erase his institution's-and his ownculpability in fostering the dark lord's education. Looking at Tom's past through the Pensieve, a container of people's memories in liquid form, Dumbledore identifies disturbing elements in Tom's character that, he asserts, were present from their first meeting. Dumbledore thus parses out nature from environmental training, particularly the complex role that the school might have played in Tom's development. This is very much what adults do when a delinquent is brought to trial, sorting out blame and looking at one another to determine responsibility, reifying the governing assumption of John Locke's tabula rasa. 1 In particular, Dumbledore, who first admitted Tom to Hogwarts, seeks to avoid sole culpability. By initiating Holly Blackford (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor of American and children's literature at Rutgers University, Camden. Recent books include Mockingbird Passing: Closeted Traditions and Sexual Traditions in Harper Lee's Novel, The Myth of Persephone in Girls' Fantasy Literature, 100 Years of Anne with an ''e'' (ed.), and Out of this World: Why Literature Matters to Girls.

Childrens Literature in Education, 1994

YWiM 35.36 (The Year's Work in Medievalism), 2020

In this article, we examine the balance of imagination and authenticity in Rowling’s medievalism through the productive and counterproductive ways in which the author makes use of fairy tales to augment her Potter universe in the later ancillaries, such as The Tales of Beedle the Bard. As we compare fairy tale elements in an expansion like Beedle the Bard with the approach found in the original heptalogy, we witness a process similar to other ways in which medievalisms are exploited by market forces.

L1 Educational studies in languages and literature, 2009

The Harry Potter saga treats the theme of magical education with a remarkable depth and complexity, to the point that it might become a shared narrative about learning and teaching, to the benefit of a large readership of educators and students. Goal of this paper is to highlight the main ingredients of the educational process which turns Harry and his close friends not just into world-saving heroes, but rather into young people who have acquired the set of knowledge, skills and dispositions that make them ready to engage in adult life and give their contribution. The narrative power of the series can be harnessed by teachers as a basis for reflecting on their own views and practices of schooling, and in the literacy classroom as a point of departure for guiding the students to reflect, from a distance, on their own schooling and learning experience.

Children's Literature, 2004

Who is today's most beloved child character? In the midst of J. K. Rowling's triumphs on the literary market, we would have difficulty giving any answer other than Harry Potter. Rowling's fifth novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, broke records with its first print run of 6.8 million copies and a second print run of 1.7 million copies. Rowling has become an international celebrity; she is now the richest woman in England, wealthier than the Queen herself, and she has even been named an Officer of the British Empire. However, five years before the publication of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, James Kincaid boldly declared that "no children have ever been more desirable" than Lewis Carroll's Alice and J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (275). In this essay I will argue that Harry Potter competes with Alice and Peter Pan by combining both of them inside himself. He experiences Peter's ecstasy when he gracefully flies, Peter's superhuman aptness when he battles deadly foes, and Peter's effortless capacity to make dreams come alive. At the same time, like Alice, Harry struggles to understand the difference between what appears to be true and what is true. In Book 1, he must work his way along a chessboard by playing with and against violently destructive chess pieces; by the end of Book 5 he has suffered betrayal by nearly everyone he knows. 1 Moreover, as Harry matures, he becomes angrier and angrier at the chaos surrounding him. In the fourth and fifth books, he longs to leave Hogwarts forever. Just as Alice, who is about to be decapitated by the Queen of Hearts, finally shouts out, "'Who cares for you?. .. You're nothing but a pack of cards!'" (97), Harry discovers that his dreams have deceived him-consequently, he has led all of his friends to their probable deaths and allowed his godfather to be murdered. For Alice and Harry, the knowledge that dreams and reality do not coincide accompanies their growth out of childhood. In Alice's case, childhood may have evaporated before her discovery of Wonderland (when she is only seven years old); the lovely Edenic garden that she