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Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter
Contributions by Lauren R. Carmacci, Keridiana Chez, Kate Glassman, John Granger, Marie Schilling Grogan, Beatrice Groves, Tolonda Henderson, Nusaiba Imady, Cecilia Konchar Farr, Juliana Valadão Lopes, Amy Mars, Christina Phillips-Mattson, Patrick McCauley, Jennifer M. Reeher, Jonathan A. Rose, and Emily Strand
Despite their decades-long, phenomenal success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. While popular books, articles, blogs, and fan sites for general readers proliferate, and while philosophers, historians, theologians, sociologists, psychologists, and even business professors have taken on book-length studies and edited essay collections about Harry Potter , literature scholars, outside of the children’s books community, have paid few serious visits to the Potterverse. Could it be that scholars are still reluctant to recognize popular novels, especially those with genre labels “children’s literature” or “fantasy,” as worthy subjects for academic study?
This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close , contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one. They interrogate the novels on many levels, from multiple perspectives, and with various conclusions, but they come together around the overarching What is it about these books? At their heart, what is it that makes the Harry Potter novels so exceptionally compelling, so irresistible to their readers, and so relevant in our time?
Despite their decades-long, phenomenal success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. While popular books, articles, blogs, and fan sites for general readers proliferate, and while philosophers, historians, theologians, sociologists, psychologists, and even business professors have taken on book-length studies and edited essay collections about Harry Potter , literature scholars, outside of the children’s books community, have paid few serious visits to the Potterverse. Could it be that scholars are still reluctant to recognize popular novels, especially those with genre labels “children’s literature” or “fantasy,” as worthy subjects for academic study?
This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close , contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one. They interrogate the novels on many levels, from multiple perspectives, and with various conclusions, but they come together around the overarching What is it about these books? At their heart, what is it that makes the Harry Potter novels so exceptionally compelling, so irresistible to their readers, and so relevant in our time?
270 pages, Paperback
Published May 23, 2022
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About the author
Cecilia Konchar Farr
11 books5 followersCecilia Konchar Farr is Dean of the College of Liberal and Creative Arts at West Liberty University where, in addition to leading as dean, she teaches, researches, and writes about popular literature and the history of the novel. She is author of The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit and Reading Oprah and editor of several essay collections, including A Wizard of Their Age and the newly published Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter.
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June 20, 2023
I absolutely loved reading intellectual, literary assessments of the Harry Potter novels, something I think the literary world has been neglecting for far too long. Most of the essays were very thoughtful, but one or two didn’t feel strong enough to be included.
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