Just a little Snape musing...

[valis2]

rickfan37 did her own build-a-snape here and mentioned this really excellent point:

Here’s the Urbane!Snape myth again. I don’t know, and we’re given no clue in canon. I simply don’t believe he’s a closet opera buff and spends his spare time humming along to great arias, or that he can quote Dante or Shakespeare at will.

It really made me think of something new. I've always been a bit apprehensive about fics where Snape quotes Byron and listens to Bach.

I think what really is happening is that giving Snape these "pretentious" hobbies is a way for an inexperienced writer to "shorthand" their characterization of him, because in just a sentence of quoting/playing classical music, they set him up (in their minds) as a certain sort of character, aloof, mysterious, educated, etc. It's a short-cut.

The thing is, the sort of character they're trying to develop is not canon. Snape is a pure-blood, and would most likely know very little, if anything, about the Muggle world (his matchbox comment notwithstanding). And I'm certain that most pure-bloods wouldn't want to involve themselves in any sort of Muggle-world scrutiny.

So authors who attempt this short-cut are really doing canon a disservice, when what they really need to do is discover what would make him an aloof, mysterious, and educated character in Rowling's world.

Just my little musing for the moment.

Comments

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Depends on what the curriculumn for Muggle Studies is, not to mention that some authors predate the split from the Muggle world and may well be part of Wizarding culture, and that the presence of Muggleborns will import Muggle culture into the Wizarding World.

Therefore, it is perfectly possible that Snape has been exposed to and understands Muggle Literature.

And it would be difficult to discover what makes him educated in the Wizarding World because you need a shared frame of reference with your readers as to what the significance of knowing about a particular text is. If you slip in a bit of Bach, both the author and the readers know what Bach is 'about'. If you slip in the well-known Wizarding author Bertie Shilling, that means nothing without long explanation and possibly inventing original poetry / snappy quotes to put into the text.

I think that original poetry is a much greater danger than a bit of misused Byron.

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

Especially in the climate in which Snape was at Hogwarts, I suspect it was a brave Slytherin who went and took Muggle Studies.

If you slip in a bit of Bach, both the author and the readers know what Bach is 'about'.

At least partially true, but it's still shorthand that is presently very much not present in Rowling's world, hence the original complaint about laziness, using literature/music to 'characterize' as opposed to actually trying to show it within the frame of reference of the Potterverse.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

If you slip in the well-known Wizarding author Bertie Shilling, that means nothing without long explanation and possibly inventing original poetry / snappy quotes to put into the text.

That's if we are assuming that "educated" in the Wizarding world is based on the same criteria as the Muggle world. It could be that an educated wizard is one with twelve Outstanding N.E.W.T.s, after all. Or one that works at the Ministry in a particularly mentally challenging area. I think that it is rather interesting to explore the possibilities instead of just having Snape quote from Shakespeare.