Quote:
Originally Posted by KSig RC
If it's so unoriginal, surely you can name others (than the litigants here), right?
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I think "originality" is something of a red herring here. There are precious few books (or movies), I think, that can claim to be truly "original." (Depending on whom you read, there are only between 7 and 20 basic plots out there.)
Rowling was drawing on some specific genres -- fantasy/quest, the coming-of-age novel (
Bildungsroman) and its subgenre -- the British boarding school novel (a la Thomas Hardy and others) -- and others. It's no slam on her at all to note that she was not the first author to do so in fashioning stories about magical kids at school, nor is it plagerism to work within the conventions of a genre and even to be influenced by earlier authors. Nobody can lay claim to stuff like "it's set in a school."
What makes a work of fiction "original" is how the author takes those elements, conventions and influences and creates something that is more than just derivitive, that works in a fresh way. How the story is told matters as much if not more than what the story is.