Rajendra Kumar Dash

Interrogating Postmodernism: an Alchemical Reading of the Harry Potter Series Rajendra Kumar Dash

The revival of Alchemy in modern fiction has taken a stride on Postmodernism. Interestingly enough, the alchemical tradition of English Literature, which is obvious in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson through the Romantics to the modern age and then the positive tradition further carried on in the landmark work in Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code and its major assertion in JK Rowling's Harry Potter novels. The present work establishes that the Harry Potter series is not a promotional literature of black magic or witchcraft and it is also not a political discourse per se. On the other hand, the underlying theme of the Harry Potter books is personal transformation leading to Self-realization, what in this work is called 'the alchemy of the soul'. Against the background of Postmodernism, the seven-series fiction has been analyzed and the outcome is shockingly revealing, that the Harry Potter series offers a serious critique of Postmodernism as a philosophy and that the revival of Alchemy both as a philosophy and as a psychology has subverted and dethroned Postmodernism from its hegemony and what's more magic has threatened to replace Postmodeernism!