Plus ca change... in, of all things, fan fiction!
I was listening this morning, as you do, to In Our Time which was on Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne. Now, I have had no great urge to read this book, which I know by reputation only. Not my scene, really.
However, what I didn't know, and what no one (no, not even the English Lit/History academics on my flist) have told me was that, as that novel was being published in all its volumes over a number of years, other people wrote and published what can only be considered fan fiction of all types -- continuations, fix-its, revised histories and so on.
And Stern loved it! He adored being a celebrity and this just, as he apparently said himself, publicised his work and made him even more well known and popular. (Also, that as Sterne 'borrowed' passages from elsewhere - from Cicero to Locke to Swift - all over the shop it would have been hypercritical of him, to say to the least, to do so. And it continues today -- apparently the opening of Midnight's Children owes a lot to Sterne.
I've never seen this brought up before, and I wonder, why not?
However, what I didn't know, and what no one (no, not even the English Lit/History academics on my flist) have told me was that, as that novel was being published in all its volumes over a number of years, other people wrote and published what can only be considered fan fiction of all types -- continuations, fix-its, revised histories and so on.
And Stern loved it! He adored being a celebrity and this just, as he apparently said himself, publicised his work and made him even more well known and popular. (Also, that as Sterne 'borrowed' passages from elsewhere - from Cicero to Locke to Swift - all over the shop it would have been hypercritical of him, to say to the least, to do so. And it continues today -- apparently the opening of Midnight's Children owes a lot to Sterne.
I've never seen this brought up before, and I wonder, why not?