Margaret Drzewiecki Presentation

1.
2.
3.
4.
a.
i.
ii.

Roles
in
Text
Overview Roles in Text
what I aim to do:
investigate the agent(s) of literature
the I(s) of literature -- as Leitch put it

5. YOU ARE HERE: here is as good as a place to start as any -- start here with YOU
6. literature: I want you to think about how you would define literature for a moment
7. definitions
8. focus definition: I think this is a good one to use for our purposes...
9. car: literature is transportive!
10. steering wheel: but whos driving?
11. Death of the Author -- Read Barthes highlights 1-3
12. arrow
13. backseat: If the author is the one driving, then the reader takes a back seat.
14. Death of the Author -- Read Barthes highlights 4-5
15. ideal reader
a. think about how youd define
b. The Ideal Reader: A Critical Fiction, Robert DeMaria, Jr.
i. [Samuel?] Johnson... posits an ideal reader at the furthest remove from authors and
texts the ideal reader is uncorrupted with literary prejudices (463); going on to say
Johnson's reader has no particular interests, and he does not inhabit a provincial time
or place; he is a citizen in an ideal capital untouched by temporary modes or fads; he
sheds whatever is merely fashionable or current? (464)
16. fan fiction -- throws a wrench into this -- define fan fiction
17. literature -- can fan fiction be literature?
18. focus definition -- remember this is the definition were using
a. If you find yourself answering yes to this question (now or later on), I think this has
some problematic implications (literature, the study of, authors, humanities relevance,
etc.).
19. ex -- just for fun: heres a juxtaposition of literary texts with their fan fiction blockbuster
counterparts courtesy of People Magazine
20.ex
21. ex
22. ex
23. citation
24. focus definition -- this definition leaves out what literature does (or should do)
25. fan fiction
a. Fanfiction is any story created by a fan about a movie, book, television show, or other
media artifact. Fanfiction stories are noncanonical, where the canon is the body of
information considered to be officially correct about a show, book, or movie. These
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stories can range from explaining canon, filling in gaps in canon, expanding canon
forward or backward in time, altering canon into alternate universe stories, or
creating crossovers between artifacts, among other forms. (McGee 162)
b. long history -- some of first fanfic written by fans of Sherlock Holmes in 1930s (162)
c. [in later decades fanfic continues to grow] Star Trek creators of original characters
expressed dislike of fanfic (162)
d. early 1990s fandom became a popular topic of academic writing, as researchers became
interested in the ways people interacted with the media. Fans, with their more intense
relationship to the media artifacts, and their articulate discussions of the media (162)
e. explosion of the internet -- increased accessibility (162)
i. increased audience
1. community!
26. fans
a. Jenkinss Poachers described a moment when fans were marginal to the operations of
our culture, ridiculed in the media, shrouded with social stigma, pushed underground
by legal threats, and often depicted as brainless and inarticulate (Jenkins 1).
b. He want[s] to construct an alternative image of fan cultures, one that saw media
consumers as active, critically engaged, and creative (1).
27. active audience
a. Jenkinss Convergence Culture describes a moment when fans are central to how
culture operates. The concept of the active audience, so controversial two decades ago, is
now taken for granted by everyone involved in and around the media industry. New
technologies are enabling average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and
recirculate media content. Powerful instutitions and practices (law, religion, education,
advertising, and politics, among them) are being redefined by a growing recognition of
what is to be gained through fostering -- or at least tolerating -- (Jenkins 1).
28.participatory culture -- participatory cultures. (1)
29. Jenkins quotation (folk - bring us back to role of intellectual - inclusiveness of roles)
30.ideal reader
31. rogue reader -- in Poachers, Jenkins defines fans as rogue readers (1)
32. broken down car -- changes agency around completely
33. steering wheel -- instead of the author driving, its the reader turned fan turned author
34. Death of the Author -- raises questions/problems of authority
35. YOU ARE HERE
36. Thomas quotation
37. QUESTION (Burgess 62)
a. who is the authority of the text?
38.YOU ARE WHERE??
a. Fan fiction is creating the sort of engaged readers that we want to be reading literature.
But what does that do to the field of literature? We want there to be something special
about being an author yet we want this quality of inclusiveness for readers to
participate. Fan fiction is doing many positive things, but is it ultimately endangering
the integrity of literature?
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Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. Image, Music, Text. Ed. & Trans. Stephen
Heath. New York: Fontana Press, 1968. 142-148. Print.
Burgess, Elizabeth. Programming Processes: Controlling Second Lives. Creating
Second Lives: Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of the
Virtual. Ensslin, Astrid, and Eben Muse, eds. New York: Routledge, 2011. 54-72.
Print.
Callero, Peter. L. From Role-Playing to Role-Using: Understanding Role as Resource.
Social Psychology Quarterly 57.3 (1994): 228-243. Print.
DeMaria, Jr., Robert. The Ideal Reader: A Critical Fiction. PMLA 93.3 (1978):
463-474. Print.
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Jenkins, Henry. Fan, Blogger, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New
York: New York University Press, 2006. Print.
Leitch, Vincent B. Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance. London:
Bloomsbury, 2014. Print.
Literature. Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature. 2003. Gale Literature
Resource Center. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.
McGee, Jennifer. In the End, Its All Made Up: The Ethics of Fanfiction and Real
Person Fiction. Communication Ethics, Media, & Popular Culture. Japp, Phyllis
M., and Mark Meister, and Debra K. Japp, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.
161-180. Print.
Steiner, Amanda Michelle. Fifty Shades of Grey and 9 More Examples of When Fan
Fiction Became Blockbusters. People. People Mag. 12 Feb. 2002. Web. 28 Sept.
2015.

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