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At the end of the seventies, Michel de Certeau compared book readers to pilgrims, who systematically trespass in territory that does not belong to them, as well as to “nomads poaching in the fields of texts that they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt as recorded on papyrus scrolls”.

The A2 Criticism Club will examine this radical group of poachers who, instead of opportunistic trespassing, have decided to occupy, colonise and plough the space of published words, sentences and stories and to plant their own crops. It will look at those who have progressed from reading to the creation of their own texts, films, songs and pictures using the stories, scenery and characters from their favourite books, films, serials or comics, transforming them in the process into new fiction held together by the enthusiasm of the true fan.

During the course of the evening we will examine the specific features of fan fiction (its recurring motifs, narrative strategies and genres), the means and rules of its production (characterised by collective creation and consumption and the spontaneous construction of a network of unofficial distribution channels) and how the established categories that literary theory has produced to describe artistic operations (from the concept of authorship and intellectual property, via the alleged autonomy of the artwork, to concepts such as originality, intertextuality and fictional worlds). As well as a formal analysis of fan fiction, we shall examine the social aspects of this phenomenon: what, for instance, does the fact that fan fiction, as opposed to official, institutionalised artworks, is usually the work of women tell us about modern society?