Pennington's Essay 'From Elfland To Hogwarts'

In "From Elfland to Hogwarts, or the Aesthetic trouble with Harry Potter," Pennington argues that "there seems to be nothing particularly original about Rowling's borrowings" (82). Nonetheless, in the article, he borrows quotes from ten different scholars - in addition to numerous references to books, TV series and movies. However, Pennington's "fuzzy set of influences" (82), is the true masterpiece of his essay. Throughout his eighteen-page essay, he mentions, with the same easiness and expertise, Tolkien and Carroll, Roland Barthes and Acocella, Harry Potter and Nancy Drew. Notably, Pennington's bravura resides in building his arguments through quotes from area-specific intellectuals: the essay is crafted so that, for example, Kathryn Hume

Notably, Pennington quotes, from chapter 39 of "The Goblet of Fire", the battle between Harry and Voldemort where "the two enemies are described as "hissing" (e.g. 644, 646)" (Pennington 86), thus exposing not only how J.K. Rowling tends to use the same verbs, but also the lack of distinctiveness between two characters that should be completely different. However, as Pennington states, "The Goblet of Fire […] [has] 734 pages" (86) and, in his essay, he only substantiates his assertions with examples from six different pages - "for Snape also hisses (e.g. Goblet 470, 472, 516), as does Ron (e.g. 513)" (86) - which, statistically, accounts for a negligible 0.68% use of the verb "to hiss" in Rowling's book. Furthermore, to illustrate Rowling's descriptive style, Pennington proposes a comparison between two extensive descriptions, one from Harry Potter and one from LeGuin's "Wizards of Earthsea". His argument is that the citations, which are 122 and 119 words respectively, are the reflection of an increment in length in Rowling books which accounts for her books' increasingly sloppier language and insignificant depictions. However, the logical connection between these two quotes -virtually identical in length and taken from different books - and Rowling's prose is preposterous. Additionally, in this particular case, Pennington does not even give any example of stylistic differences between the quotes, leaving the task to the astute deductions of the readers. Thus, this paucity of examples and quotes is a symptom of the global lack of credibility of Pennington's claim that "Harry Potter […]