That's certainly a reasonable response to this sort of thing. I think the thing that defused my sense of it as derivative was that a)she was engaging with issues like race that Forster avoids in Howards End and b)the literary conflict that I mentioned and which I've done a reasonable amount of reading about provided a tertiary source material that illuminated the choice of Howards End in particular as the text to be copied.
Also as a serious reader of postmodernist literature and a serious reader of fanfiction, derivative stoppped seeming like a criticism to me ages and ages ago. It's hard to tell which of my two primary literary communities steals more from other authors.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-07-15 02:32 pm (UTC)Also as a serious reader of postmodernist literature and a serious reader of fanfiction, derivative stoppped seeming like a criticism to me ages and ages ago. It's hard to tell which of my two primary literary communities steals more from other authors.