Harry Potter e a Pedra da Narrativa

Abstract

In this paper, we analize through the lights of Gremasian semiotics, the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, written by British writer J.K Rowling (2000) and translated to Brazilian Portuguese by Lia Wyler, taking it primarily as an object of meaning, which means to make evident its intradiscursive mechanisms of producing meaning. By doing so,we verify how the content plan of this text is structured, so that we obtain parameters to compare it to children fairy tales, considering the hipothesis that it echoes or uses recurring elements in these stories. Our analysis focused primarily on the narrative level, as it was proposed by the generative course of sense. In this context, Vladimir Propp, one of theprecursors of Gremasian semiotics, whose works about wonderful Russian folk tales have greatly contributed to the constitution of the narrative level, enabled us to make a more accurate comparison with traditional fairy tales through the thirty-one functions by himdefined. The achieved results reveal that, under the variability of the textual surface of J. K. Rowlings book, there are constants also found on the aforementioned tales, besides many of the Proppian functions. We therefore notice that Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone is not an isolated passage in the history of worlds children literature: it is only one of its chapters, with deep roots in traditional fairy tales. Finally, we approach, succinctly, some ideological issues and we discuss the empathy between the book and its public, through its constant and, at the same time, variant nature, that is, traditional and innovative, which webelieve helps us understand its success.