Overview
- Studies the emergence of transfictional and transmedia storytelling in the nineteenth century
- Contributes to fan studies, transmedia studies, and nineteenth century periodical studies
- Interrogates the nature of fictional character
Part of the book series: Palgrave Fan Studies (PFS)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
–Ann K. McClellan, Ph.D., Plymouth State University, USA.
An innovative study that shows just how interactive, collaborative, and improvisational was the development of Victorian transmedia characters including Mr. Pickwick, Jack Sheppard, and Sherlock Holmes--and a vital prehistory of fandom.
–Rebecca Nesvet, PhD. University of Wisconsin, USA
Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century is an exciting and long-overdue application of fan studies to the 19th century literary world. Haugtvedt shows how the mass storytelling culture developed by the early Victorians resulted in the transmedia extensions of popular novels via penny press plagiarisms, printed illustrations, retellings in song, tie-in marketing and costuming, and cheap theatrical adaptations, and argues that these practices anticipate and are usefully compared to fandom practices of the 20th and 21st centuries. This book bridges an important gap in the field between more overtly folk practices and modern media fandom: for once, Sherlock Holmes is the end, not the start, of the story.”
–Francesca Coppa, Ph.D., Muhlenberg College, USA
One of the most exciting recent developments in Victorian studies is the burgeoning field of adaptation. Erica Haugvedt’s exciting new book historicizes and theorizes the transmediation of canonical texts into new storyworlds across centuries, expandingthe boundaries of what we understand as fandom. From Mr. Pickwick to Sherlock Holmes, realist Victorian characters leap across novels, genres, and media for new authors and creators to reimagine and for Huagtvedt to examine as a fascinatingly interconnected web of interfictionality.
–Dr. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman.
Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century is a transformative study that synthesizes key terms in contemporary transmedia adaptation studies and recontextualizes them through the historical evolution of literature, media, and culture. Haugtvedt seamlessly combines contemporary media and narrative theories from Henry Jenkins and Marie-Laure Ryan with historical studies of the literature and the marketplace such as Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel and Deidre Lynch’s The Economy of Character. The study never loses sight of the many industrial, legal, economic, and aesthetic contexts of nineteenth-century literature, media, and culture, nor of the many ways that nineteenth-century audiences engaged with fictional characters based on class difference. Through her historical understanding of transfictionality and transmediality in the making of iconic characters, Haugtvedt shows us how “aesthetic theories of fictional character that fail to account for what audiences actually do with characters are inadequate” and only through serious consideration of readers and fans as creators (not only of meaning, but also of new content) can we understand dynamic reading practices grounded in a network of creation, circulation, extension, and meaning that have driven reading, remediation, and reception for centuries. Individual chapters delve into specific nineteenth-century transfictional and transmedia hits from Charles Dickens’s Pickwick to the many adventures of Sherlock Holmes, iconic examples considered alongside the transfictional andtransmedia adaptations and extenstions of Jack Sheppard and Trilby, characters widely popular in the Victorian period though lesser known today. Haugtvedt’s approach achieves theoretical, contextual, and archival balance that will shape the ways that we talk about narrative, transmediality, adaptation, seriality, extension, convergence culture, and fan studies from a historical perspective for years to come.
–Lissette Lopez Szwydky, Ph.D,University of Arkansas, USA.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Erica Haugtvedt is Assistant Professor of English in the Humanities Department at South Dakota Mines in Rapid City, South Dakota, USA. She specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, media and advertising history, and popular culture. She received her PhD in English from Ohio State University in 2015. She works on the serial Victorian novel and its contemporaneous adaptations—particularly focusing on serial character across media. Her articles have appeared in Victorian Studies, Victorian Periodicals Review, Transformative Works and Cultures, and Victorian Popular Fictions Journal.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Nineteenth Century
Authors: Erica Haugtvedt
Series Title: Palgrave Fan Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13463-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-13462-3Published: 18 November 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-13465-4Published: 18 November 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-13463-0Published: 17 November 2022
Series ISSN: 2662-2807
Series E-ISSN: 2662-2815
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 217
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations
Topics: British Culture, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Popular Culture