The Case for Fanfiction: Exploring the Pleasures and Practices of a Maligned Craft

By Ashley J Barner

Challenging readers to rethink what they read and why, the author questions the aesthetic assumptions that have led to the devaluing of fanfiction--a genre criticized as both tasteless and derivative--and other "guilty pleasure" reading (and writing), including romance and fantasy. The complicated relationship between "fanfic" and intellectual property rights is discussed in light of the millennia-old tradition of derivative literature, before modern copyright law established originality as the hallmark of great fiction.

"Absorbed reading"--the practice of immersing oneself in the narrative versus critically "reading from a distance"--is a strong motive for the appropriation by fanfiction of canon characters and worlds.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1476668779
• ISBN13: 9781476668772
• Release Date: October 2017
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 8.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher