Quaternary intertextuality: fan fiction as a tool for analysis of canon fiction
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| Title: | Quaternary intertextuality: fan fiction as a tool for analysis of canon fiction |
| Creator: | edaindirith |
| Date(s): | July 26, 2006 (between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows) |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Harry Potter |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Quaternary intertextuality: fan fiction as a tool for analysis of canon fiction |
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Quaternary intertextuality: fan fiction as a tool for analysis of canon fiction is a 2006 Harry Potter essay by edaindirith.
It was one of fifty essays posted to HPInkPot, a section of FictionAlley.
Summary
Ever wondered whether fan fiction has any other use than titillation? Quaternary intertextuality outlines a possible use of fan fiction as a tool for analysis of characterisation in canonical fiction. Several techniques are considered, and some questions regarding fan fiction as a meme and as a subject of anthropological study are raised.
Excerpts
Fan fiction, like all fiction, is connected to the rest of written and filmatic literature through intertextual bonds, elements and associations held in common and references to other works. Such intertextuality may be divided into three distinct levels, which we shall call primary, secondary and tertiary intertextuality.
Primary intertextuality is the most fundamental intertextuality. It is the common use of cliché phrases and formulations and the use of similar syntactic constructions in different works in the same language. This level is of little interest, as much of this intertextuality is automatically imposed on any two works written in the same language.
Secondary intertextuality is the common use of characters, plots and devices that is held in common by most, if not all, literature, such as common tensions between characters, sexual, competitive or other. Again, this intertextuality is for the most part imposed by the demand for realism in good literature, and is held in common because these elements are found in all human intercourse and should therefore be represented in literature about humans.
The tertiary intertextuality is considerably more interesting, and also somewhat more restricted. This comprises all intertextual elements held in common within a particular genre. This includes a large number of plots and backdrops (the prosaic backdrop favoured in the crime novel, or the archetypical Merlin character found in nearly all novels where some form of magic is the focus (e.g. Dumbledore, Sparhawk, Merriman, Gandalf, Aslan.)
Such intertextuality, and the interconnectedness of such distinct intertexualities, or scopes of narrative variety, is of some interest, but in the case of fan fiction, perhaps almost uniquely in modern art, there is a fourth, a quaternary intertextuality. This intertextuality is derived from the canonical work within each fandom. All fan fiction within a fandom has as its basis a common work or set of works, from which many aspect of all works in that fandom are borrowed wholesale. This includes the historical backdrop, the decriptions of the environment in which the story develops, and many aspects of characterisation and diction.
This dependence of fan fiction on canon creates a situation in which authorship rests not in one person (or on society as a whole and the whole corpus of existing literature, as Barthes holds[1],) but in two separate creative individuals, two separate instances of writing. The first is the author of the canon fiction, whom we shall refer to as the author, the other is the author of the fan piece, whom we shall call the writer. The author creates artificial limitations on the scope of narrative variety, which change not only the dynamic of producing literature in fan fiction, but also the expectations of the audience; our sense of what ought to come next, what ought to happen, in other words our ability to predict the development of the characters, whether consciously or subconsciously, is enhanced, and with it the demand to produce literature that is within the bounds of these expectations. This restricted phase space of possible narratives is most reminiscent of mediæval bardic traditions, and opens for an avenue of analysis of the canonical fiction that is not otherwise immediately apparent. The restricted creative role of the writer, predominantly that of choosing archetypal plots, either from the canon or from the wider corpus of literature, and formulating the precise diction, as well as restricting the canonical body for the purpose of a shorter, or more condensed piece, is of some interest in itself and worthy of reflection, but this paper will focus on phenomena related to the role of the author.
Whether there is any real information to be gathered from such analysis remains to be seen. It will be time-consuming work, and I personally do not have the time necessary to conduct large-scale fandom analysis or to produce a variety of plausible works of fan fiction. Yet I firmly believe that considerable information may be gleaned, both about why some fandoms (in effect literary memes) are more successful than others, and also on how well written, how realistic, any given character who appears in a fandom really is.