Fan Fiction – The Logical Extension
Elizabeth Woledge Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

This paper will provide an overview of my approach to the study of fan fiction as a literary and creative form of literary criticism. One of the reasons for the traditionally ethnographic or psychological, as opposed to literary, approach to fan fiction may be that fan fiction is a form of derivative or appropriative fiction which is traditionally considered of little literary merit. However, literary critics are everywhere busy making, sometimes very esoteric, interpretations of more canonical appropriative texts. Yet these very same critics are often unwilling to acknowledge the parallels between their own skills and those of the writers they analyse. This paper considers the parallel courses of appropriative writers and literary critics using fan fiction as an example of a hybrid form. Both creative practitioners use exclusion and emphasis to create new interpretations which they present as the logical extension of the source material. A 'logical extension' which is emplotted in ways determined the narrational preferences of the writer reflecting mainstream genres from Romance and Pornography to Intimatopia. I will be leaving time for discussion and questions at the end of my paper.