Challenging the Canon: The Fanfiction of the Harry Potter series

Abstract

This paper evaluates fanfiction as an interpretative genre which brings into question
certain aspects of a popular work of art like the Harry Potter series. This study draws
on Henry Jenkins seminal text, Textual Poachers (1992), to further this argument and
study how fanfiction has literary value. Jenkins argument that fans are like critics who
engage in active meaning-making of the canon is central to this study. To demonstrate
that fanfiction brings into question popular tropes, this essay specifically analyses the
trope of the orphan child and the Manichean dualism of the good and evil in the Harry
Potter series. To arrive at the above stated argument I analyze Seventh Horcrux by
Emerald Ashes, a fanfiction of the Harry Potter published on Fanfiction.net. This fan
text reworks the story, characters, and the genre of the canon which demonstrates that
fans produce literature which talks back to the canon and actively bring into question
popular tropes in literature.