The Continuing Adventures of<i>Blanchardyn and Eglantine:</i>Responsible Speculation about Early Modern Fan Fiction

Abstract

Because most early modern readers did not leave behind traces of their reading practices and thus remain anonymous, a more inclusive history of reading requires a willingness to engage in speculation. In the case of Tudor editions of the romance he Historye of Blanchardine, responsible speculation involves resisting the desire for textual stabilities, including the author's name and the work's status as a reprinted text. Doing so reveals that what appear to be reissued editions of William Caxton's version of this romance, Blanchardyn and Eglantine (1489-90), are in fact a network of adapted texts whose representations of gender challenge current understandings of the Elizabethan romance, its producers, and its target audience. More specifically, what seems to be a fragment of the 1597 edition is instead an early example of fan fiction, a modern narrative mode that offers a methodological model for scholars interested in adopting more inspired approaches to material evidence.