Quaternary intertextuality: fan fiction as a tool for analysis of canon fiction.

Fan fiction, like all fiction, is connected to the rest of written and filmatic literature through intertextual bonds, elements and associations held in common and references to other works. Such intertextuality may be divided into three distinct levels, which we shall call primary, secondary and tertiary intertextuality.

Primary intertextuality is the most fundamental intertextuality. It is the common use of cliché phrases and formulations and the use of similar syntactic constructions in different works in the same language. This level is of little interest, as much of this intertextuality is automatically imposed on any two works written in the same language.

Secondary intertextuality is the common use of characters, plots and devices that is held in common by most, if not all, literature, such as common tensions between characters, sexual, competitive or other. Again, this intertextuality is for the most part imposed by the demand for realism in good literature, and is held in common because these elements are found in all human intercourse and should therefore be represented in literature about humans.

The tertiary intertextuality is considerably more interesting, and also somewhat more restricted. This comprises all intertextual elements held in common within a particular genre. This includes a large number of plots and backdrops (the prosaic backdrop favoured in the crime novel, or the archetypical Merlin character found in nearly all novels where some form of magic is the focus (e.g. Dumbledore, Sparhawk, Merriman, Gandalf, Aslan.)

Such intertextuality, and the interconnectedness of such distinct intertexualities, or scopes of narrative variety, is of some interest, but in the case of fan fiction, perhaps almost uniquely in modern art, there is a fourth, a quaternary intertextuality. This intertextuality is derived from the canonical work within each fandom. All fan fiction within a fandom has as its basis a common work or set of works, from which many aspect of all works in that fandom are borrowed wholesale. This includes the historical backdrop, the decriptions of the environment in which the story develops, and many aspects of characterisation and diction.

This dependence of fan fiction on canon creates a situation in which authorship rests not in one person (or on society as a whole and the whole corpus of existing literature, as Barthes holds[1],) but in two separate creative individuals, two separate instances of writing. The first is the author of the canon fiction, whom we shall refer to as the author, the other is the author of the fan piece, whom we shall call the writer. The author creates artificial limitations on the scope of narrative variety, which change not only the dynamic of producing literature in fan fiction, but also the expectations of the audience; our sense of what ought to come next, what ought to happen, in other words our ability to predict the development of the characters, whether consciously or subconsciously, is enhanced, and with it the demand to produce literature that is within the bounds of these expectations. This restricted phase space of possible narratives is most reminiscent of mediæval bardic traditions, and opens for an avenue of analysis of the canonical fiction that is not otherwise immediately apparent. The restricted creative role of the writer, predominantly that of choosing archetypal plots, either from the canon or from the wider corpus of literature, and formulating the precise diction, as well as restricting the canonical body for the purpose of a shorter, or more condensed piece, is of some interest in itself and worthy of reflection, but this paper will focus on phenomena related to the role of the author.

Because the narrative of the author, especially its characterisations and the pace and development of the plot, determines the scope of variety, fan fiction is a far more uniform genre than other genres of fiction. As the boundaries of variety within a particular fandom are defined by the scope of narratives possible while still remaining within certain limits of plausibility and not conflicting (too much) with the canon, and these in turn are defined by the author, and as the size and quality of the fandom is partly dependent on having a canon which allows quite a large variety of works, and since the scope of variety in fan fiction is largely dependent on the quality of characterisations (fan fiction, as opposed to other fiction, nearly always focuses on characterisation, and thus the aspect of primary interest in this paper is characterisation,) the quality, plausibility and depths of the characters in the canon can be used as a rough gauge of the likely size of the fandom. Conversely, and perhaps more interestingly, the quality of characterisation in any given work can be gauged by the scope and variety of possible fan fiction deriving from it, as we shall see later on.

Much of the interest in a work of fiction lies in its social relevance, the message that it attempts to convey to its readership (or so it is held by the classical British school of literary criticism.) Yet most such messages, in many cases inthe form of subtle instructions or admonitions, have already been delivered many times, and therefore exist in the intertextual space of fiction. Any such theme is therefore in itself of less interest, being merely a repetition, a reinforcement of a message already conveyed. The reader's interest is not captivated by a single theme, artfully presented, or if it is, his attention is only arrested for a brief time, and the work quickly pales and looses its value. Rather, as Umberto Eco argues in Casablanca: cult movies and intertextual collage[2], a work of fiction's primary value as a rereadable (or in his article rewatchable) piece lies in the reader's conscious or unconscious recognition of a multiplicity of these themes or archetypes, which on their own merely make a piece kitsch, but which take on an entirely different and far deeper, subtler interest when they interact within the piece.

For our purposes, the theme of the canonical piece is of little interest, and yet Dr. Eco's theory is highly applicable. As the multiplicity and interaction of archetypes is what makes a film a cult film, so it is, at least in my opinion, the multiplicity of possible plausible interpretations of a literary character, and by extension the variety of possible situations and reactions that he or she may be credibly placed in or attributed, that makes any given work of written literature a cult piece, or even a rereadable piece at all. Some argue that the only true fan fiction will never endow any of the canonical characters with any quality or reaction pattern that is not exhibited in the canon. This naturally severely restricts the scope of narrative variety even further, and to my mind effectively kills the fandom for all but the least sophisticated literature. Furthermore, this definition effectively excludes all slash and femme slash fiction, and therefore is not likely to catch on. Just as no real person is aware of the precise and complete reason for his or her actions at the time they were performed, nor can predict fully their own reactions to any situation, so a literary character must, in order to be credible, have within itself the potential for unexpected action, for reactions that lie relatively far from the ordinary reaction pattern.

It is this aspect that the existence of the quaternary level of intertextuality may allow us to analyse. By examining the scope of possible variations of the kind outlined above in a given character, the quality of the piece in which the character exists may be gauged. Of course, it is not so straightforward. As opposed to the character-focused, condensed literary form that prevails in fan fiction, original fiction (if that term is applicable to what it may be argued is simply a slightly directed concentration of possible associations in the reader) may also focus on other aspects, and indeed its charm may lie in yet other aspects (some closer to those examined by Eco, others perhaps more to do with the credibility of the universe in which the piece is set, an aspect also analysable by fan fiction, but one not dealt with here.) However, as a rough guide, this tool is extremely useful, and may indeed help shed light on why some literature, such as Harry Potter, generates vast fandoms, while the works of other widely selling authors, such as the arguably technically more accomplished Terry Pratchett, do not.

There are two discreet methods by which this scope of variety may be gauged. Firstly, one may set out to test the limits of the possible fiction, creating very different pieces and judging their plausibility and readability. This method we shall call creative, or active analysis, and has the advantage of being able to test as thoroughly as the researcher may wish (and have time for - it seems to me to be a highly time-consuming method.)

The other method, much more closely related to the interesting study of what makes a given fandom successful, in effect why certain literary archetypes are more successful memes than others, is to examine the preexisting fandom and sample the variety found therein. This method may be called passive analysis, and does not test the possible scope of variety, but the realised scope of variety. In some ways, this method gives a more realistic picture of the merit of the canon, as in any sufficiently large and old fandom, any sub-genre that has not been explored to some extent is likely to fall outside the scope of variety that is ever going to be realised.

Obviously, passive analysis has its limitations too; it effectively ignores any aspect of a character not already explored (which may be for reasons of popular demand, rather than any inherent unsuitability of the aspect for exploration,) and is more useful for a more anthropological study of fan fiction, whereas active analysis allows for more thorough literary analysis, while ignoring the realised scope of variety, and therefore the aspect of popularity which is arguably a highly relevant gauge of quality.

Whether there is any real information to be gathered from such analysis remains to be seen. It will be time-consuming work, and I personally do not have the time necessary to conduct large-scale fandom analysis or to produce a variety of plausible works of fan fiction. Yet I firmly believe that considerable information may be gleaned, both about why some fandoms (in effect literary memes) are more successful than others, and also on how well written, how realistic, any given character who appears in a fandom really is.