Fan fiction and premodern literature: Methods and definitions

It is a cliché of any introduction to fan fiction to claim its precursors in canonical authors, including Virgil, Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, and Milton. But what does it mean to call the Aeneid or the Divine Comedy fan fiction? What kinds of analyses might such an approach generate? A survey of the nascent field of premodern fan fiction studies reveals three main axes of approaches to reading premodern literature through the lens of fan fiction (poaching, transformation, and affect), which are organized in turn around different definitions of fan fiction, suggesting one possible interdisciplinary theoretical model. Rather than focusing on the selection of canonical texts, this burgeoning and vibrant field of study must instead focus on developing its methodology.