Heraldry and Medieval Animal Symbolism in 'Harry Potter'

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Anglistik), course: Animals in Medieval Literature and Beyond, language: English, abstract: Now each of these four founders formed their own house, for each did value different virtues in the ones they had to teach. By Gryffindor the bravest were prized far beyond the rest; For Ravenclaw, the cleverest would always be the best; For Hufflepuff, hard workers were most worthy of admission; And power-hungry Slytherin loved those of great ambition. (Rowling 2000). This quotation from one of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling introduces us to the four houses of the famous wizard world: Gryffindor depicting a lion on its coat of arms, Ravenclaw an eagle, Hufflepuff a badger, and Slytherin a snake. That animals play an important part in the wizard world of Harry Potter is nothing new; there are owls, wolves, and unicorns throughout the book series. There are also creatures from Roman-Greek mythology, such as Fluffy, the three-headed dog. Furthermore, one even finds human-animal creatures and animal totems called 'Patronus' which demonstrate the blurred lines between humans and animals-a phenomenon that was feared in the Middle Ages but apparently not in the wizard world imagined by Rowling (Salisbury 1994; Ravagli 20102).