Canon, fan-fiction, and
imaginary worlds – a
philosophical perspective
Henry Shevlin
Thinking Serially – repetition, continuation, &
adaptation
CUNY Graduate Center, April 23-24 2015
Some philosophical puzzles about fiction
- There are long-standing debates in philosophy about
fiction.
- However, most philosophical debates about fiction focus
on single works with single authors.
- I think there are some interesting puzzles that emerge
when we think about different kinds of fiction.
- Today I’ll talk quickly about three puzzles arising from
fan-fiction and imaginary worlds.
Puzzle one: who exactly is Harry Potter?
- The name “Harry Potter” is a meaningful bit of language.
- We can use it to refer to someone (admittedly, someone who
doesn’t exist).
- One view associated with Bertrand Russell
is that names are actually a kind of covert
description.
- So maybe “Harry Potter” actually means
“the boy who lived with the Dursleys and
attended Hogwarts and defeated
Voldemort.”
Puzzle one: who exactly is Harry Potter?
- But this can’t be the whole story. For one, I can write a
piece of fan-fiction where Harry Potter is female, or
never became a wizard, or was born 100 years earlier.
- In other words, I could succeed in referring to Harry
Potter even if I portray him entirely differently from how
Rowling portrayed him.
- That shows that fictional names aren’t just descriptions.
- The main alternative view is the causal theory of names:
names are symbols passed down through causal chains.
Puzzle one: who exactly is Harry Potter?
- But again, it’s not obvious that this can be the whole
story. Consider the infamous 50 Shades of Grey, which
started as a piece of fanfiction (Master of the Universe).
- The original fanfiction was clearly about Bella and
Edward. The existing work is instead about Christian and
Anastasia.
- At some point the causal
chain was broken. But
how?
Puzzle one: who exactly is Harry Potter?
-
One suggestion is that it’s the author’s intent that matters: EL
James intended to make the book about new fictional
individuals, and thus it was done.
-
But maybe she did this for copyright
reasons. What is E.L. James still secretly
thinks of Christian as Edward. Does that
mean that Christian really is Edward?
-
Here’s another problematic case. The
epic of Gilgamesh contains the story of
Utnapishtim, who built an ark to save
humanity from a flood, just like Noah.
Noah may just be a Hebraicized version
of Utnapishtim.
Puzzle one: who exactly is Harry Potter?
-
However, Noah is not Utnapishtim. This shows that a causal
chain of reference can break down, even when there’s no
deliberate attempt to create a new story.
-
Can causal chains also converge? One possible case is that of
Apollo and Helios. They started as different gods, but were
rapidly equated.
-
As the Greek historian Walter
Burkert says "Different names
may refer to the same being, or
else they may be consciously
equated, as in the case of
Apollo and Helios.“ But how is
this possible?
Puzzle two: canon and meaning
-
According to the dominant view of fictional content among
philosophers, the meaning of a work consists of whatever
the author intends to convey to the audience.
-
Canon is the ultimate determinant of what is true for a story
or imaginary world.
-
Are they the same thing? Certainly, we take author’s
statements to be canonical most of the time.
-
However, authors sometimes say
things that are not directly supported
by the text; consider J.K. Rowling’s
claim that Albus Dumbledore is gay.
Puzzle two: canon and meaning
- However, what J.K. says doesn’t contradict the text. It’s
tempting to say that it’s canonical that Dumbledore is
gay even though it’s not part of the content of the Harry
Potter stories.
- However, couldn’t J.K. publish a one sentence story:
“One day, Dumbledore told everyone he was gay”?
- That would undeniably place it in the realm of the
stories themselves. Would that be any different?
- Either way, there’s a worry about the power of authors
to change the nature of the worlds they create.
Puzzle two: canon and meaning
-
I think there’s some reason to think that an author’s
statements about the world can simply be false. This is more
likely in large multi-part works.
-
For example, imagine J.R.R. Martin says in an interview that
“Jon Snow always keeps his promises.”
-
An alert reader might point out that
in Book IV, his actions contradict a
promise he made in Book I.
-
This would seemingly be a feature of
the work, and even of canon, even if
it escaped the author’s attention.
Puzzle three: what are imaginary worlds?
-
A final question concerns imaginary worlds themselves.
-
What is it that makes a world “the Marvel Cinematic
Universe” or “the Star Trek universe”?
-
One theory would be that it is the
characters that anchor us in a world. Thus,
the Star Trek universe is the world of
Captain Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard.
-
But we could imagine that universe existing
even if Kirk and Jean-Luc had never existed.
-
We can also radically change the history of a
world.
Puzzle three: what are imaginary worlds?
- Perhaps we should think of imaginary worlds as a
separate sort of fictional object from the characters and
events within them.
- We might think that they are passed down from
storyteller to storyteller via causal chains like names.
- Of course, we have the same problems as those with
names; why isn’t the universe of the Noah stories the
same universe as the Gilgamesh universe?
- Are there any limits to this? Could we imagine a Star
Trek universe with dragons, magic, and no aliens at all?
Conclusion: a few puzzles
- I don’t think all of these puzzles are necessarily insoluble,
though I don’t have easy answers to any of them.
- But they’re all problems that are driven or sharpened by
attention to works outside the traditional focus of
philosophy.
- Thank you!