Much like Homer, I think, whose stories were oral before they were written, and which therefore changed... until they were written down.
I've been trying to decide if fanfiction is evolving back toward a kind of oral tradition, or whether it's merely the same human impulse to retell that affects everything from classical tragedies to book reviews. It's certainly multivoiced, but by definition not viewed as valid as the author's original work; it seems you need at least half a century before it becomes literarily acceptable to ring changes on novels or plays or operas as well as myths. (I originally wrote "at least a century," but then I remembered Sherlock Holmes, who has been pretty much in a constant state of retelling since Conan Doyle wrote him down.) And of course it's still a fixed medium, unless you're thinking out loud at a con.
In our world where storytelling has become synonymous with the mediums of the written word and film, I wonder how many of us consider this distinction?
no subject
I've been trying to decide if fanfiction is evolving back toward a kind of oral tradition, or whether it's merely the same human impulse to retell that affects everything from classical tragedies to book reviews. It's certainly multivoiced, but by definition not viewed as valid as the author's original work; it seems you need at least half a century before it becomes literarily acceptable to ring changes on novels or plays or operas as well as myths. (I originally wrote "at least a century," but then I remembered Sherlock Holmes, who has been pretty much in a constant state of retelling since Conan Doyle wrote him down.) And of course it's still a fixed medium, unless you're thinking out loud at a con.
In our world where storytelling has become synonymous with the mediums of the written word and film, I wonder how many of us consider this distinction?
I think about it a lot, but that's my brain . . .