Plus ca change... in, of all things, fan fiction!

[lil_shepherd]

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

Comments

[madfilkentist]

I believe Cervantes wrote Part II of Don Quixote because so many other people were writing about the Don (and making money from it - there was no law against derivative works in those days) that he felt his own character had been grabbed away from him.

[lil_shepherd]

Apparently Don Quixote was one of the many works Sterne himself was borrowing from.

[la_marquise_de_]

And, of course, one can view the whole Arthurian corpus as a kind of fan fic: almost all the 'big' works have many continuations and variations by other hands.

[madfilkentist]

Going even further back in time, the Apocryphal Gospels could be considered Christian fanfic.

[sam_t]

The palaver slightly earlier in the century about Samuel Richardson's Pamela is interesting as well. Criticism, praise, discussion, really heated arguments, imitations, satires, plays, paintings, engravings, waxworks ... even Pamela-themed accessories, which led to possibly the first fan-art fan art.

I knew that people went a bit wild about Tristram Shandy as well but although I knew there was a lot of discussion and impatient waiting for the next installment I hadn't realised that there was contemporary fan fiction. I wonder how the writers coped with Sterne's narrative techniques...

[starcat_jewel]

I suspect your answer is "because it would undermine the official academic narrative about fanfic" -- possibly with a side of "You can't call that fanfic, because fanfic hadn't even been invented yet!" (Which is a separate fallacy, but a very common one.)

[shiv5468]

I adore Tristram Shandy. One of my favourite books, and a joy to read. But I didn't know there had been fan fic of it.

I'd love to read some of that as well.

[la_marquise_de_]

This happened to Dumas with The Three Musketeers, too.

[lil_shepherd]

I knew it happened a fair amount in the 19th Century and anyone could do anything at all with other people's work in the 16th and earlier. I was surprised by it being usual in the 18th Century, when people were getting a bit more possessive about their published work.