This article focuses on the practice of literary rewriting, where characters and plots of existing literature are developed into new works. It defends the recent body of literary rewrites as a genre unto itself, but warns that its practice is threatened by oversimplified copyright doctrine. The author first discusses 3 modern literary theories that complicate notions of originality and in doing so challenge copyright's authority to bar rewriting. The ideas of “the death of the author,” “the anxiety of influence,” and “marginality” in literature destabilize the concept of authorship and suggest that rewriting is a necessary method for creating new, valid works. It cites Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone as a rewrite of Gone with the Wind which acts on the literary theory of marginality by giving a voice to slaves from the world of the original novel. The novel's allowance as parody, however, is an oversimplification of its nuanced commentary. This parody-based fair use qualification ends up limiting works of rewriting that don't necessarily criticize underlying work, but take new perspectives and shed new light upon it. The article further argues that rewriting always occurs in respect to significant “canon” work. The existence of literary rewriting simply identifies works that have been already been rewarded with success; it does not inhibit innovation or bar progress.

This article is significant for its support of rewriting as a valid means of expression that propagates new ideas, rather than opposing it as a lazy practice that inhibits innovation. Although rewritten work does not always parody underlying work, it is innovative because it offers new and original (to the extent that the word may be used) perspectives on older works. Furthermore, rewriting tends to identify original works by copying only those works that are considered significant, or “canon,” enough to be worth updating. The article does not refer to Japanese dojinshi. However, a similar understanding of rewriting appears to guide the response to dojinshi in Japan, where original characters are rewritten into new situations or altered in a way that changes our understanding of original work.  The idea that work can be fair use without being parody has become a major theme in my research and supports the argument that certain types of creative fan endeavors should be protected as fair use.