Anyone who says the divine comedy is fanfiction has not actually read it. They may think they read it but really they just stared at each page and then set it down they did not read it. What's frustrating about this is that once again this defense of fanfiction/fanart (though frankly, I never see this type of outlandish "defending" being done about fanart. No one is out there calling the Sistine Chapel fanart.) is dependent on the idea that all art must be accepted as critically important or life-changing to be worthwhile and that's stupid! You're being stupid! Someone saying fanfiction is not the same as original works is not an insult, it's a statement of fact! Someone saying fanfiction is amateur writing is not an insult, it's a statement of fact! Whether or not the writing is good or bad is irrelevant! It's supposed to be amateur--it's an unprofessional work of creative fiction by a fan engaging with/manipulating another creator's media for their own personal entertainment!
- @filmnoirsbian on tumblr
So many have read Paolo and Francesca, and read it wrong.
- T.S. Eliot
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In an attempt to criticize the reduction of Dante’s Inferno to fanfiction this user posits a definition of both fanfiction and literature that is possibly more reductive. I find that this is a pattern with people who rely on exclusionary definitions of art and literature in order to find value in the art they like. In an effort to define music, or literature, or painting, by what it is not you necessarily exclude and limit works that don’t neatly fit that definition.
Because that's the thing about literature—it eludes neat categories and definitions. And if you define literature as what is “professional”, or “original”, or outside of the purview of “entertainment”---as something that is serious, and cannot ever be frivolous, you are actually excluding works that would play with these definitions and tease them out. No one can, no one has ever completely defined what makes literary fiction literary.
And people have tried. People have declared the “novel” at one point to be frivolous, not worth the academic acknowledgement. People have considered genre fiction to be insightful, albeit entertaining. But what is genre fiction? Have all literary works (that are now retrospectively declared of literary importance) been celebrated in their day as such? Sci-fi fantasy has undergone this kind of re-examination and it's not that I’m necessarily waiting for fics to undergo that as well, my main point is that this view of art is very flawed and belies the love of literature.
And it does actually make me angry. Because while the user reaffirms that fanfiction is indeed art, they still find the need to exclude art into two categories, low and high. And these categories are not static! In fact, it’s not real. It doesn’t exist. And they never have.