Fan Fiction in a Literary Context
For most people, John F. Kennedy Jr was a character in a play, a character in a story, just the way Sherlock Holmes was. When he's lost, then people react very emotionally. Constantly rehearsing the details of somebody's life and death shows that people are trying to continue the story. We always try to do that when the story ends before we're prepared for the ending.
- Neil Postman, chairman of the department of culture and communication at New York University[1]
On the official Anne Rice web site[2] appears the following message:
I do not allow fan fiction.
The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters.
It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.
Until relatively recently in the history of fiction, this would have seemed a very odd message from writer to reader. For a start, the idea that there is some intrinsic virtue in using an "original" character or story would have puzzled most ancient or mediaeval writers. They did do that sometimes, but they plundered the vast resources of myth and history just as happily - indeed there is a mediaeval convention of authorial modesty whereby writers routinely claim that they found the story they are about to tell in some ancient book. Thus Robert Henryson, the fifteenth-century Scottish poet, tells how, one winter night by the fire, he read a book:
writtin be worthie Chaucer glorious,
Of fair Cresseid and lustie Troilus.[3]
And he tells us that when he had finished Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, which ends with Troilus mourning his faithless love but does not say what became of her, he took another book, in which he found
...the fatall destinie
Of fair Cresseid
This second book, of course, does not exist, though it will: he is about to write it. The Testament of Cresseid is his sequel to Chaucer's poem, using the characters both poets had borrowed from Greek myth and made their own, though neither would have thought to call them "my characters". However individualised by each successive poet who used them, they were still Troilus and Cressida, part of a resource that belonged to all.
History is another such resource and Shakespeare, his contemporaries and successors happily plundered classical, English and European history for plots and characters.
Genetics play a significant role in obesity, since they increase a persons risk of gaining weight or developing excessive eating habits. “In a study of 226 families by Plymouth's Peninsula Medical School, researchers found that obese mothers were 10 times more likely to have obese daughters and for fathers and sons, there was a six-fold rise” (Medindia, 2009). The obesi...
Obesity moved across the nation without regard to sex, race, and age, or so it seemed. However, it strikes some groups more than others. Furthermore, 69 percent of non-Hispanic black women are overweight or obese and 58 percent of non-Hispanic black men are overweight or obese (?Overweight and Obesity?? np). Studies show that minorities in a lower socioeconomic bracket are more likely than whites in a higher socioeconomic bracket to become obese (?
Lord Selborne in the case of Wilson v Northampton and Banbury Junction Rly Co[ (1874) 9 Ch App 279.] had outlined the purpose of specific performance. His Lordship stated that specific performance will only be granted when it can by that means do more perfect and complete justice. The purpose of granting specific performance is to ensure that justice can be uphold as perfect as it could be. However, the specific performance will only be granted when there is inadequate and insufficient remedy of damages to any case of breach of
It is said that an obesity epidemic is sweeping the country and that the numbers are astronomical. Approximately 31% of all adults and 15% of children, ages 6-19 are obese. Obesity is also severe in a variety of ethnic groups. For example, 50% of non-Hispanic black women are obese. Many researchers believe that the trend in obesity as a lot to do with cultural, economic, and environmental factors. Simply stated I think it can be attributed to genetics, portion size as well as food available and cost, and laziness.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,) there were 90.6 million obese individuals in 2010 (Ogden, Carroll, and et al). This represents approximately 36% of the total population. In 2010, it was determined that out of the 36% of obese person...
Mandell, Jerome. Geoffrey Chaucer : building the fragments of the Canterbury tales. N.J. : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992.
According to an article in Oxford Journals, “There is substantial evidence for the hereditability of obesity, and research in both rare and common forms of obesity has identified genes with significant roles in its etiology” (Genetics…).
The Canterbury Tales is a great contemplation of stories, that display humorous and ironic examples of medieval life, which imitate moral and ethical problems in history and even those presented today. Chaucer owed a great deal to the authors who produced these works before his time. Chaucer tweaked their materials, gave them new meanings and revealed unscathed truths, thus providing fresh ideas to his readers. Chaucer's main goal for these tales was to create settings in which people can relate, to portray lessons and the irony of human existence.
(2) Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales edited by M.H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001). All future references will come from this text.
Hartley, John (2002), Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, London, Routledge, pp. 19-21.
Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. (1992). Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender. University of California Press, Ltd: England. (pgs 188-208).
Two of the greatest masters of British literature, Shakespeare and Chaucer, tended to look to the classics when searching for inspiration. A lesser-known example of this lies in an ancient tale from Greece about two star-crossed lovers. There are many variations on the names of these lovers, but for the purpose of solidarity, they shall henceforth be referred to as “Troilus and Criseyde” for Chaucer and “Troilus and Cressida” for Shakespeare. Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” offers up a classic tale of love that is doomed, whereas Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida” is not only tragic but also biting in its judgment and representation of characters. This difference may be due to the differences in time periods for the two authors, or their own personal dispositions, but there can be no denying the many deviations from Chaucer’s work that Shakespeare employs. Shakespeare’s work, by making the characters and situations more relatable, builds upon Chaucer’s original work, rather than improving it or shattering it.
Chaucer is not some unknown literary author who is known only by a dozen people in the English field. Besides Shakespeare, Chaucer is probably one of the most well-known contributors to English literature, if not the most well-known. His name is instantly recognizable, and many a high school student learned of him through the oftentimes-painful reading of his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s work is an extremely important text in terms of the evolution of the English language; The Canterbury Tales set itself apart from other literary works at the time by being one of the first pieces of literature to be written in English instead of French, and its extreme popularity spurred the creations of even more English literature, allowing the language to regain its prominence and evolve into the English we know today (“Chaucer”; Kemmer). Today, it’s the most prominent example of Middle English work, and is studied not just for its literary worth but as evidence of what the language was like at the time. The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer’s importance are extreme, and the author enjoyed his fame during his life as well as long after, largely due to his abilities to make sound decisions, take risks, learned to learn as a professional, and transfer knowledge, skills that people even today can utilize to be successful.
The case of R v Hughes will be used throughout this essay to supplement ...
Reality Of Copyright Owner And Consumer Interests In Fan Fiction." SMU Law Review 58.4 (2005): 1551-1581. OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson). Web. 2 Apr. 2014.