Response To Birgit Wiedl's Article Magic For Daily Use And Profit

Samantha Schott- Tutorial #5

ML101

Dr. Renée Ward

November 6th, 2014 Birgit Wiedl’s article Magic for Daily Use and Profit explores the ideas of religion based magic, potion making, herbology, spells, divination, and love potions in both the Muggle and wizarding world. According to Wiedl, magic is vital in the wizarding and Muggle world, the main difference is how the Middle Ages treated magic. Throughout Wiedl’s article she argues that magic in the Muggle world was a learned tradition but was important to the daily lives of medieval society. This review will focus on how magic is used on a daily basis and how convincing Wiedl is at proving her thesis that magic is important to the Middle Ages and the Wizarding world although it was a

This definition is not as simple and continues to define what magic was through six main ideas concerning the ideas as stated previously. Wiedl uses both medieval anecdotes and examples from Harry Potter to support her idea that magic was a daily occurrence in both worlds. The use of this makes the article seem much more credible since ideas are presented through historical anecdotes, therefore making the article seem more historical than persuasive. With every argument Wiedl finds evidence from both sources with ease and connects them to each other to create a well executed idea. When the wizarding world’s opinion of magic differs from the Muggle world she explains each side clearly and outlines the opposing ideas. She uses clear language and uses straightforward explanations to convey her thesis. Since she uses such diction it is more appealing to a wider variety of readers who many not know much about one of the subject worlds. She also makes Harry Potter characters, characters of her own in her

As Wiedl explains even the Christian church in the Middle Ages could not separate where “religion ended and magic began” (12). Daily magic was used to be practical and was suppose to help those who needed to be helped. Since there were no regulations of what magic was it became an increasing problem to define it. As Wiedl remarks, what one person would deem as religious may be deemed as magic to another. As magic became more widespread the word magic was not under the control of anyone and was up the Church to decide if intervention was necessary. Wiedl uses love potions as a specific example and remarks that love magic was often over looked by much of the medieval society because it was not truly dark magic. Most often women were only “vulnerable to this accusation” when women “rose to a higher social status through marriage or concubinage” (31). This is important because we see that magic is affecting all levels of the social hierarchy in medieval times. It raises the question of what is dangerous magic and how should Muggles respond. When the lower class is using the magic it is not a threat but when there is social gain there seems to be a problem. Although it was a problem, the use of love potions is never truly looked into and if passed off as not a