Blog Prompt #1

Please address either one or both of the following prompts. Reply on a new thread, using “Blog Post #1 Response:” and your own title. Again, please remember to avoid spoilers past book 2 (tempting as these might be!).

Prompt 1: Wolfgang Iser argues in “The Reading Process” that “reading removes the subject-object division that constitutes all perception, [and so] it follows that the reader will be ‘occupied’ by the thoughts of the author […] Text and reader no longer confront each other as object and subject, but instead the ‘division’ takes place within the reader himself” (67). How might you apply this insight to the first two Harry Potter books? Reflect on the way your own experiences may alter the way you read, what interests you, and how you either identify with or fail to identify with various characters in the series. Consider how someone with a different perspective, and therefore, a different perception, may read these works differently.

2) In “The Reading Process” Wolfgang Iser also argues that “expectations are scarcely ever fulfilled in truly literary texts” (53) because the text continually modifies our expectations about what is to come. Consider how this applies in different ways to the first two Harry Potter books. What expectations are raised? Why? What expectations are and aren’t fulfilled? Why? What is important about the choice to raise an expectation and then fail to fulfill it?