Gothic Technique In Harry Potter Series

Among the books published in recent ten years, the"Harry Potter"novel series by British female author J. K. Rowling attract a lot of attention. It all began from 1997, when Rowling published the first one of this series Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the UK, which was listed on the top of the best-sellers soon. During the following 2 years, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were published one after another and made great Harry Potter waves around the world. The fourth one—Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—was published in the amount of 5,300,000 for the first edition, while the fifth one—Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—came out in June, 2003, and became the first English novel on the top of German and French best-sellers. The sixth book—Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—was published in 2005 and also achieved record sales with great ease. On 21st July 2007, with the issue of the seventh book—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—the whole novel series were officially done and translated into 69 languages and issued in more than 200 regions in the world.This fiction series describe stories of magic learning, rules breaking and adventures exploring of several kids in a boarding school. Why they can conquer so many children of the world as well as lots of adults who freely acknowledge their love of these"children's books"and immerse into the fantastic unrealistic world? On the one hand, it has great relationship with the features of the novels themselves and the successful operation in business; on the other hand, it also has unbreakable relationship with English literature tradition, the consequential esthetic habits, and, especially Gothic element which is the distinguished highlight of the novel. The previous research achievements about this fiction series mainly include four aspects: first, the discussion about teenagers'growth; second, exploration to contemporary fairy tales'inspiration; third, analysis to the characters'personality; fourth, other aspects such as writing features and translation features. However, the analysis or research from Gothic prospects is rare.This thesis chooses the aspect of"Gothic novel", takes its classic works—The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk and The Italian—as the examples, summarizes the main features of English traditional Gothic novel in scene, plot, theme and character, and therefore, reread Harry Potter novel series—the"children's book"and analyze its succession to Gothic novel tradition, its success in applying Gothic techniques as well as its literary significance of worldwide popularity.