Section Days abstract book 2010.indd - RUB Research School ...

HSS_11
HARRY POTTER AND TWILIGHT AS
TRANSGRESSIVE PHENOMENA
Maria Verena Siebert
Fakultät für Philologie; Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum, Germany
e-mail: maria.siebert@rub.de
What Harry Potter and Twilight most obviously have in common is their commercial success
as mass entertainment. This is, in large part, due to the conservative nature of these texts.
Why then, should they be labelled “transgressive”?
These works of fiction transgress boundaries in three ways: Harry Potter and Twilight both
have transgressed the border of the medium, multiplying the literary text into a multitude of
texts dispersed across different media and thus building a franchise. They have also
transgressed the borders of nations with their international success stories. Last but not least,
they have transgressed the border between children’s and adult’s literature. This last
transgression is the one that has received most critical attention and has helped the
proliferation of the term “kidult”. Though children’s literature had always addressed both
children and their parents, the adult consumption of children’s literature in the cases of Harry
Potter and Twilight has added fuel to the flames of the discussion about the infantilization of
adults through consumer capitalism.
The dissertation project will focus on the adult/child distinction in these works of fiction and
in the meta-discourse about them. The startling paradox between the clear-cut distinction of
children and adults in these fictions and the fears about the blurring of this distinction voiced
in real life will be the subject of analysis.