This researched aimed to answer the question of whether fanfiction can be considered as legitimate literature. A piece of fanfiction is a story based on a pre-existing work, written by fans of that work. Today, fanfiction is most popularly published online and for free. In this research, legitimacy in literature is defined by three criteria; the lawfulness of a work, the recognisability of the work as a proper form or genre of literature, and the serious intent the work seems to present. The legitimacy of fanfiction as literature was assessed with these criteria in mind. A conclusion was reached through exploring laws relevant to fanfiction and professional authors’ attitudes on fanfiction as a genre. I also conducted a survey of the fanfiction community to assess the role of fanfiction in the literary world and to identify the serious social intent that fanfiction promotes
Permanent link to this resource: https://doi.org/10.24384/a9jt-6m97
Pollard, Amy
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2019
© Pollard, Amy Published by Oxford Brookes University