This book is a study of how transfictional and transmedia storytelling emerges in the nineteenth century and how the period’s receptive practices anticipate the receptive practices of fandom and transmedia storytelling franchises in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The central claim is that the serialized, periodical, and dramatic media environment of the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century in Great Britain trained audiences to perceive the continuous identity of characters and worlds across disparate texts, illustrations, plays, and songs by creators other than the earliest originating author. The book contributes to fan studies, transmedia studies, and nineteenth-century periodical studies while also interrogating the nature of fictional character.
Author(s): Erica Haugtvedt
Series: Palgrave Fan Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 224
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: From Novel Studies to Fan Studies
A Theory of Transfictional Character: Realism, Immersion, and Schemata
Victorian Fandom?
British Nineteenth-Century Transfictionality
Chapter Organization
Works Cited
Chapter 2: Pickwick Abroad (1837–1838): Transfictional Character as Permanent Object
An Old-Fashioned Tale
Pickwick Abroad
A Rivalry
Master Humphrey’s Clock
Reviving Pickwick
Transfictional Character as Permanent Object
Parallel Simulations: Performing Writing and Reading
Works Cited
Chapter 3: Jack Sheppard (1839–1840): Class and Complex Transfictional Character
The Jack Sheppard Mania
Rhetoric of Class and Literacy
Victorian Intellectual Property Law and Transmediality
Jack Sheppards
History and Fiction
Complex Transfictional Character
Class Conflict
Works Cited
Chapter 4: Trilby (1894) in the Marketplace: fin de siècle Merchandising and Transfictional Character as Branded Object
Trilby in the Marketplace
Advertising and Serial Narration
Publication History: Illustration, Advertisement, Literature
The Novel: Trilby as Object
Reception: Trilby in the Marketplace
Works Cited
Chapter 5: Sherlock Holmes (1887–1930): Believing in Character
Sherlock Holmes in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals
Naive Believers
Ironic Believers: The Baker Street Irregulars
Playing the Great Game
The Final Problem: Retroactive Continuity and Resurrecting Sherlock Holmes
As Spectral as the Hound
Was the Later Holmes an Imposter?
Enchanting the Real and the Imagined
Works Cited
Chapter 6: Afterword
Works Cited
Index
