Originality, was Re: Fan fiction was RE : Libraries, etc

[Rita Winston]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Michela Ecks <mecks at p...> wrote:
> Rosmerta wrote:

> > And with all the efforts of various emotional and physical
> > kinds that go into writing anything, fanfic very much included, 
> > how does it feel when it's all over to have written something
> > that is derivitive in the literal sense, derived from someone
> > *else's* brainchild? With a little more effort (okay, a LOT more,
> > since the initial genius spark is the biggest thing) couldn't you
> > be writing your own "stuff?"
> 
> My original fandoms are Star Trek and Babylon 5... and in
> universes like those, and like Harry Potter where there are many 
> characters who appear and disappear in books, the works that can be
> derived from those are often as creative and as original as the
> original material.  I have read some really good stories that take
> place outside the generic universe of the show.  Authors use the
> basis of the universe, such as the concept of Star Fleet but using
> an original ship with a crew we have never met or a planet
> mentioned in passing in canon as having an extinct race and the
> author writes about life on that planet.  It's dervative but 
> original and not such a blatant "rip-off".

Did Hesiod invent all those gods and their myths that he wrote 
about in the Theogony, and all the agricultural practises that he 
wrote about in Works and Days, and did Homer invent all those heroes 
and the events that happened in the Trojan War and the Returns? I am 
under the impression that Ovid was retelling Greek myths in his Latin 
Metamorphoses.

I'm pretty sure it was in Northrup Frye (ANATOMY OF CRITICISM) that I 
read about Milton choosing the theme for his great epic, considering 
King Arthur, but settling on The Creation and the Fall (y'know, 
Milton, PARADISE LOST). Frye (if it was Frye) said something about 
Milton's era had not yet learned our modern obsession with always 
having a new gimmick, and both Milton himself and his poet and 
non-poet contemporaries took it for granted that 'the greatest poet' 
(which Milton considered himself) is obligated to use  'the greatest 
theme', which to them was that story that Tolkien later called the 
greatest of all fairy-stories: The Creation The Fall, and The 
Redemption.