Author and narrator in fanfiction community texts (a study of fanfics based on literary classics)

Abstract

Recent research on Russian-language fanfiction has focused on analyzing the fanfic text itself, exploring its structural, stylistic, and artistic aspects. While the role of the author in the fanfiction community has always been crucial, the current research emphasizes a more comprehensive investigation of the sociological dimension of authorship rather than its literary aspects. The unique communication style prevalent in the fanfiction community challenges the traditional model of author-reader relations, leading to a shift in the dynamics of interaction between ficwriters and ficreaders. This change creates a noticeable gap in the academic understanding of the different forms of authorship in fanfiction. To maintain a meaningful author–reader–original text dialogue, ficwriters introduce a specific narrator persona. Our study, which examines narrators in fanfics based on Russian classical literature through comparative analysis with metatextual information and insights from in-depth interviews, concludes that the narrator possesses both obligatory and optional features. These features enable the narrator to act as an intratextual mediator in the ongoing dialogue between the author and the reader. The narrator seamlessly integrates into the fictional world as a character while conveying the author’s perspective outside the text. This role significantly differs from the conventional concept of a “raisonneur.” The analysis of the narrative structure reveals that the narrator in fanfiction serves as an artistic projection of the fanfic author, blurring the lines between biographical and artistic authorship for both readers and the author. The narrator actively contributes to the storytelling process, providing synchronous commentary on their own work and exercising control over the characters. This aligns with the authorial intention in fanfiction, where the author initiates a dialogue between readers and the classic source text, both “from inside” and “outside” the text through creative interpretation.