Fanfiction and Imaginative Reading a Dissertation
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"I Opened a Book and in I Strode": Fanfiction and Imaginative Reading A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Ashley J. Barner April 2016 © 2016 Ashley J. Barner. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled "I Opened a Book and in I Strode": Fanfiction and Imaginative Reading by ASHLEY J. BARNER has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Robert Miklitsch Professor of English Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT BARNER, ASHLEY J., Ph.D., April 2016, English "I Opened a Book and in I Strode": Fanfiction and Imaginative Reading Director of Dissertation: Robert Miklitsch This dissertation studies imaginative reading and its relationship to fanfiction. Imaginative reading is a practice that involves engaging the imagination while reading, mentally constructing a picture of the characters and settings described in the text. Readers may imaginatively watch and listen to the narrated action, using imagination to recreate the characters’ sensations and emotions. To those who frequently read this way, imagining readers, the text can become, through the work of imagination, a play or film visualized or entered. The readers find themselves inside the world of the text, as if transported to foreign lands and foreign eras, as if they have been many different people, embodied in many different fictional characters. By engaging imaginatively and emotionally with the text, the readers can enter into the fictional world: the settings seem to them like locations they can visit, the many characters like roles they can inhabit or like real people with whom they can interact as imaginary friends and lovers. The readers feel that they have been absorbed into the world of the text, and sometimes into the characters. One genre of literature is particularly closely connected to the act of imaginative reading: Internet fanfiction. In fact, imaginative reading is the source of Internet fanfiction and thereby shapes many of the genre’s characteristics. Bringing imaginative reading to bear on fanfiction texts reveals characteristics of these texts and of the genre in 4 which they participate. Because imaginative reading, especially of culturally devalued texts by young women, is frequently decried by critics, fanfiction, which is frequently written by young women about these culturally devalued texts, is often tarred with the same brush. Thus many of the characteristics of fanfiction derive from fan writers’ attempts to avoid the stigmas accruing to imaginative reading and readers. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The process of writing a dissertation is often likened to a journey. I prefer to think of it as a quest: specifically, the quest in The Lord of the Rings. What did you expect from a Tolkien fan? Frodo’s quest was only completed through the help and guidance of the Fellowship. I would like to thank the members of my own Fellowship of the Dissertation: Dr. Robert Miklitsch, Dr. Thomas Dancer, and Dr. Marsha Dutton. My parents, family, and friends also provided much-needed emotional, social, and financial support. They couldn’t carry the dissertation for me, but they could—and did—carry me. I only hope that, having reached the end of this quest and thrown the One Dissertation into the Mount Doom of Academia, it will meet a better fate than the Ring did. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 8 Imaginative Reading ....................................................................................................... 8 What Is Fanfiction? ....................................................................................................... 12 Notes on This Dissertation ............................................................................................ 17 Preview of Coming Attractions .................................................................................... 19 Glossary of Fanfiction Terms ....................................................................................... 20 General ...................................................................................................................... 20 Kinds of Fanworks/Fannish Activity ........................................................................ 23 Creating and Consuming Fanfiction ......................................................................... 23 Fanfiction Genres ...................................................................................................... 24 Punctuation and Portmanteaus .................................................................................. 27 Chapter 1: Imaginative Reading and Fans ........................................................................ 29 From Reading to Writing .............................................................................................. 29 Positive Views of Imaginative Reading ........................................................................ 30 Criticisms of Imaginative Reading: Vulnerable Readers and Devalued Texts ............ 35 Criticisms of the Fan as Imagining Reader ................................................................... 49 Chapter 2: Mary Sues and Bovarysme .............................................................................. 57 What Are Mary Sues? ................................................................................................... 57 Mary Sue as Objective Correlative for Imaginative Reading ....................................... 59 The Ubiquity and Censuring of Mary Sues .................................................................. 66 Chapter 3: Critical Reading and Fanfiction ...................................................................... 78 Criticizing Canon .......................................................................................................... 78 Quality Control ............................................................................................................. 84 Fanfictions as Critical Readings of Fanfictions ............................................................ 92 Chapter 4: Fanfiction in Conflict with Copyright ........................................................... 105 Copyright and Commerce ........................................................................................... 105 7 Author Objections to Fan Appropriation .................................................................... 111 Appropriation According to Fans: Schrodinger’s Legolas ......................................... 114 Appropriation as Figured in Fanfiction ...................................................................... 116 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 120 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 126 8 INTRODUCTION Imaginative Reading Fanfiction is an ancient literary genre, widely familiar from the works of Greek playwrights, the mythic and legendary retellings of the Middle Ages, and reaching up into the modern world. In recent decades, however, it has taken off in new ways because of the ubiquity of modern media, ranging from plays to movies to television shows to the Internet. Especially on the Internet, fans find themselves rewriting the works of popular classics such as Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. One way of understanding the popularity of fanfiction is its origin in a practice I call imaginative reading: engaging the imagination while reading, mentally constructing a picture of the characters and settings described in the text. Readers may use imagination to watch and listen to the narrated action, recreating the characters’ sensations and emotions in themselves. To imagining readers the text can become like a play or film visualized or entered. Readers find themselves inside the world of the text, as if transported to foreign lands and foreign eras, as if they have been many different people, embodied in many different fictional characters. By engaging imaginatively and emotionally with the text, readers can enter into the fictional world. Some scholars have discussed imaginative reading while contrasting it with the modes of critical reading they are asked to do in the literary academy. One such discussion of imaginative reading appears in Anne G. Berggren’s “Reading like a Woman.” As the title implies, Berggren sees this reading practice as highly gendered. Drawing on her own reading experiences—as well as those of nine middle-class, middle- 9 aged, non-academic female readers—she establishes the characteristics of this reading practice, arguing that women reading imaginatively identify with fictional characters, draw lessons for life from the pages of fiction, and read obsessively. She distinguishes between these absorbed women readers and scholars: When I entered a doctoral program in English and education at age fifty- two, I noticed immediately that my lifelong reading practices—personal, accepting,