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Note: in places in this post I use the terms "fan" and "fannish" to refer to a particular style of reading and a particular type of engagement with the text. Unfortunately, these words have extremely negative connotations. If there had been suitable synonyms, I would have used them instead. Sadly, however, there aren't. So please do try to bear in mind while reading this message that although "fannish" is often considered a derogatory term (while "academic" is more positively connoted), I intend no value judgements upon these two modes of reading.
"Fannish" readings are perfectly respectable and indeed, even instinctive. In fact, reading in this manner is generally what we do when we read for pleasure; without it, fiction itself would be very unlikely to exist at all. The difference between simply "reading" and fannish reading, as I see it, is that fan communities have established an entire mode of analysis based on this mode of approach. They do analyze texts critically—and sometimes very critically indeed!—but they do so within the context of the mode of reading for pleasure. Fandoms in some ways therefore bridge the gap between the completely unselfconscious act of reading a work of fiction for pleasure and the academic style of analyzing a text.
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Eloise wrote:
Following Elkins' first exposition of these ideas, back in February, I posted a long-forgotten note commenting from the perspective of my own background, in music.
I do remember your thoughtful response, Eloise! I did mean to reply to it at the time, actually, but it, er, was thoughtful. You know, as in "required thought?" And back in those days I seem to remember feeling far less willing than I am now to respond to things once some time had passed (Silly Elkins!), so I'm afraid that I just let it slide.
I remember that the part of your post that really stymied me was when you asked about JKR's notes: all of those infamous shoeboxes full of papers that she occasionally shows to reporters. That was a real stumper for me, and now I see that you have raised the issue again -- thus forcing me once more to think.
::sigh:: You people really do help to keep me honest. You know that?
Eloise:
One of the things that I think may be at the root of some of the anxiety about JKR's authorial intentions is the unpublished canon, so to speak.
Yes, I agree. Even leaving aside for the moment the question of those pesky notes, the books are effectively a serial, which means that it is quite natural for readers to speculate about future canonical events. Such speculation almost invariably involves the attempt to second-guess the author's conscious intent because, well, how else would one go about it?
The in-progress nature of the series is even more anxiety-provoking, I think, when it comes to literary analysis than it is when it comes to speculation. It is very much a part of the nature of speculation to be "disproved" by later canon. It does not feel nearly as natural to me to contemplate the notion of a work of literary analysis being "disproved."
Perhaps this is because we are accustomed to analyzing completed texts, while speculation is the province of serialized fiction? I don't know for sure. But I do know that while I personally feel perfectly content with the knowledge that Book Five, when (and if) if ever comes out, will almost certainly sink many a speculative theory, I find it rather distressing to contemplate the notion that the next volume might well serve to undercut completely one of my favored thematic readings.
Perhaps one of the reasons for concern over whether interpretations are canonical or not is that JKR has made it very public that there are 'right' answers to many of the questions we ask, 'right' answers that are sitting in her little notebooks, perhaps 'right' answers that will never be revealed.
She has. I myself tend to suspect, though, that her fictional universe is not really nearly as elaborately defined in those notes as many of us enjoy imagining it to be. The books really are just riddled with inconsistencies, which leads me to suspect that the Master Plan is probably not nearly as masterfully planned as JKR might enjoy leading her readers to believe it to be.
Now, as long as these remain unpublished, remain in her private domain, they are not, by Elkins' definition (I think), 'canon' . The problem that I see is that we are dealing with an author who conveys a strong sense of authorial intent, of wishing to control her creation, whilst intentionally withholding parts of it. The suggestion is thus that the unpublished information is canon, which to JKR, it presumably is, as it's all part of her carefully thought-out scheme.
I think that this might come down to what you were saying before, about works of art only truly existing as art in the interplay between creator and audience. So long as that information continues to be withheld, then to my mind it is very much the same as the author's own internal thoughts on her fiction. To the author herself, of course, her thoughts on her own work are the absolute truth about the fictive reality. "Canon," though, is a term that I think really only has relevance to the reader.
Of course, once that information is released to the public, then the situation might change, depending very much on the context in which one is discussing the uses of canon. It would, for example, be possible to write a literary analysis of _The Lord of the Rings_ without recourse to any of Tolkien's other published Middle Earth material. If one were analysing the trilogy as a work of fiction, then it would seem to me quite reasonable to set out with the ground rule that one was considering the work as a discrete entity, and thus, for the purposes of that project, choosing not to recognize material contained within _The Hobbit_ or _The Silmarillion_ as relevant to the task at hand. If one were writing what one hoped to be a perfectly canonically loyal Middle Earth fanfic, on the other hand, then one would presumably want to accept all of the published writings and notes and shopping lists, and whatever other tat Christopher Tolkien chose to have published after his father's death, as "canon."
When it comes to the HP books, I tend to approach them primarily as a work of fiction. I'm therefore predisposed to accept only material contained within the scope of the books themselves as "canon." But of course, people differ widely in their approach to this issue.
One of the fascinating things about the Potterverse is this feeling that we are glimpsing part of another world, a world that seems to be (apparently claims to be) internally consistent (aren't many of our threads concerned with trying to work out these consistencies, smooth out the apparent contradictions?), a world, in other words that has some kind of real, objective truth about it.
Indeed, this is one of the major distinctions between "fan" readings and academic ones. Fandoms are characterized by the tendency to discuss the fictive universe as if it is a real place, existing independently not only of the author's intent, but even of the canonical text itself. So, for example, one often finds fanfiction which takes as its starting premise the point at which the "real" characters (in other words, the real people upon whom the canon characters were "based") first encounter or first learn of the existence of their fictive counterparts. (They are almost inevitably appalled by the terrible "lies" that the author has told about them in the text.) You also find the "moral inversion" version of this fic, in which the canonical text itself is revealed to be nothing but a slanderous piece of propaganda distributed by the canonical heroes -- who of course are revealed to be in truth the villains of the piece. Stories in which the author is revealed to be an emigrant or a refugee from the fictive world are also very common. These story premises are fanfic classics. They can be found in all fandoms. They are ubiquitous.
The fannish interest in explaining away canon's internal inconsistencies and plot holes without recourse to external argument is also a symptom of this same phenomenon. Even while understanding that the real reason for some seeming inconsistency within the text is likely one of authorial strategy (or even of simple authorial error), fan readers will nonetheless always try to come up with some "in-world" explanation for it. This reflects the fan's preference for a style of reading which grants the fictive universe the status of objective reality.
This feeling that we are talking about a world with an objective reality sits ill at ease alongside our intellectual realisation that it is in fact a fictional world, one which we are free to interpret according to our own lights. I feel this may account for some of the contradictions in the way we choose to interpret it.
Yes. We see a nice mix of approaches on this list, I think. Some posts, such as those which attempt to find in-world ways to reconcile "FLINTS," are quite deeply (and also generally very self-consciously) based on the assumptions of fan reading. Others are more academic in their approach, allowing for the recognition of factors such as authorial error and strategy. Many combine the two approaches, or else make it explicit when they are moving from one form of analysis to the other ("I'm sure that it was really just a FLINT. But here's one way that we could go about explaining it...").
(One of the nice things about this list from my perspective, BTW, is that people here generally are aware of the difference. They can therefore jump back and forth between the two types of reading without undue difficulty, and can mark in a clear fashion when they are toggling their mode of approach. This cannot be said for the Usenet groups that I have lurked about on, where the population has tended to be both much younger and far less self-aware.)
—Elkins
Posted to HPfGU by Elkins on May 30, 2002 10:39 AM
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