There's actually a subgenre of Literature with a capital L that is, essentially, fanfic of old works in the literary canon. Perhaps authors get away with this more easily than fanfic of contemporary works because they are considered a kind of "updating"; the author is taking a feminist or non-colonial or otherwise "modern" view of the text, and running with it. Sometimes in the opposite direction.
Errr. I understand what you're attempting to say here, but I don't agree with some of it. Authors "get away" with this because in an attempt to modernize what has become a part of the literary canon they're responding to it across a generation; this is they type of dialogue that exists when history intervenes; when the modern tropes and the historical tropes can't coexist, but there's still an echo of old power.
The sequel to Gone With The Wind was fanfic, yes. Pure, utter fanfic. And awful. But I found the first one awful as well, in a kind of fascinating but couldn't-bear-to-finish-the-prose way. And someone mentioned the Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson DUNE books, which I would class as follow-on in the fanfic tradition.
But I really don't consider something like Mists of Avalon (which I didn't love) to be in any way like fanfic.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-10-21 04:27 pm (UTC)Errr. I understand what you're attempting to say here, but I don't agree with some of it. Authors "get away" with this because in an attempt to modernize what has become a part of the literary canon they're responding to it across a generation; this is they type of dialogue that exists when history intervenes; when the modern tropes and the historical tropes can't coexist, but there's still an echo of old power.
The sequel to Gone With The Wind was fanfic, yes. Pure, utter fanfic. And awful. But I found the first one awful as well, in a kind of fascinating but couldn't-bear-to-finish-the-prose way. And someone mentioned the Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson DUNE books, which I would class as follow-on in the fanfic tradition.
But I really don't consider something like Mists of Avalon (which I didn't love) to be in any way like fanfic.