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Contents
Introduction ................................. p 2
I
The Pedagogical Mystique ................................. p 5
The Classroom Professional ................................. p 8
The Process of Writing ................................. p 15
II
Towards a New Theory ................................. p 18
Conceptions of Creative Writing ................................. p 20
General Implications for Teaching ................................. p 25
Postscript ................................. p 27
Notes ................................. p 29
Bibliography ................................. p 33
1
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
Introduction
The quirky juxtaposition of the terms in the title, The Literature of the Unpublished,
goes further than mere description. It is intended as a warning that the terms
'literature' and 'unpublished' are here being subverted: in the first instance with respect
to the aesthetic baggage which clings to 'literature' as 'a highly valued kind of
writing', and in the second instance with respect to the negative baggage associated
with 'the unpublished', suggesting rejected, unworthy, of lesser value. The title
declares, then, a less normative use of these terms, prying them open, preparing them
for a broader redescription which takes us beyond the prevailing text-centred
paradigm of literature and writing.
The pressure for such a redescription is already signalled in the term 'creative writing'
of the sub-title. For Creative Writing occupies the rather unique position of sounding
well defined and straightforward while being almost meaningless. On the surface it
describes, somewhat simply, the practice of writing in particular 'literary' genres:
mainly poetry, fiction and drama. But it does not, despite its name, describe the
practice of writing 'creatively'. As Williams (1983) notes, the term 'creative' has
become "so conventional, as a description of certain general kinds of activity, that ...
any imitative or stereotyped literary work can be called, by convention, creative
writing"(p84). Indeed, in the capricious world of aesthetic and literary value which
underpins the use of these terms, it is not stretching a point too far to suggest that
'creative writing' is synonymous with the 'unpublished'. Once 'published' it becomes a
kind of 'literature': subject matter for literary studies, even if this consists of critical
rejection. Ironically, then, 'creative writing' is not only not inherently associated with
'creativity', it is often regarded as synonymous with 'uncreative' ('unpublished'),
pseudo texts. This is particularly acute in higher education where we teach and study
'literature', but do not produce it: Instead, according to Scholes (1985) "we teach
something called 'creative writing' - the production of pseudo-literary texts."(p5)
2
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
Writing has come to prosper, yet one curious feature of its growth is that ... it has
generated very little in the way of ... theoretical publication"(p7-9), is hardly
surprising. This is not simply an oversight - although on going debates as to whether
it is worthy of being an academic discipline in its own right, let alone a field of
theoretical study, has certainly limited theoretical progress. Neither is it for lack of
attention. Books on the various genres, sub-genres, elements, processes, techniques,
markets and experiences of creative writing have almost generated a publishing
industry in themselves. No, there has been a marked lack of coherent and
comprehensive theoretical publication because Creative Writing genuinely resists
theorising. Indeed, it demands a theory which isn't so much theoretical as mystical.
It both assumes and aspires to a transcendental realm of "creation".
In this respect, moreover, Creative Writing is positioned at the very heart of the end
of millennium 'wars' shaking the foundations of English studies, pivotal in what has
been described as the "growing fissure opening between 'creation and theory'"(ibid).
The fallout of Theory's recent onslaught, proclaiming the destruction of Literature,
has been fearfully viewed by many writers as embodying the issue of individual
creation itself. Indeed, it may be regarded as a literary version of Genesis contra
Darwin: a kind of discursive 'monkey' trial. As with the Author of humanity, the
author of the literary text is being displaced by virulent waves of "Theory". Under
the banner of the new atheists, the Nietzschean eruption that "God is dead" has
stormed ashore to pronounce, along with Barthes (1977), "the death of the author"
(p142).
In neither case, of course, does the "death of God or the Author" mean the full blown
denial of their existence. (These are separate debates.) Its force is, rather, to deny to
God or to the writer the notion that their "texts" are fully defined by them, by what
Umberto Eco (1992) refers to as the "intentio auctoris"(p25). Nevertheless, for many
believers and for many writers this is rather abhorrent. They have, respectively, an
unshakeable faith in the original, omnipotent creativity of God and in the original,
individual creativity of the writer. And in this, it is primarily a question of
"ownership". As God "owns" His creation, writers fully "own" their textual creations.
Indeed, this is enshrined in the Bible and in copyright, both of which are respectively
sacrosanct.
What many writer's feel desperately uncomfortable with is the 'sight' of literary
theorists stomping over ground which they have come to hold as sacred. Their texts
are expressions and reflections of themselves, of their ideas, their experiences, their
3
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
emotions and, here, theorists have been saying this is not so, at least not so when the
reader gets hold of it. Suddenly it's a cultural artefact which reflects the conditions of
its production, the ideological structures of its culture. Suddenly its a product which
is not read in terms of the issues and questions it's creator, the writer, encouraged, but
rather in terms of those he or she did not encourage. Wayne Booth (1979) illustrates
this well:
What do you have to say, you seemingly innocent child's tale of three little pigs
and a wicked wolf, about the culture that preserves and responds to you?
About the unconscious dreams of the author or folk that created you? About
the history of narrative suspense? About the relations of the lighter and darker
races? About big people and little people, hairy and bald, lean and fat? About
triadic patterns in human history? About the Trinity? About laziness and
industry, family structure, domestic architecture, dietary practice, standards of
justice and revenge? About the history of manipulation of narrative point of
view for the creation of sympathy? Is it good for a child to read you or hear
you recited, night after night? (p 243)
For many writers this goes too far. It is interpretation of the worst kind,
overinterpretation resulting in the loss of the aesthetic text for the cultural object. The
"passional" reading is set aside for the cultural reading. It echoes the lament of many
believers: the loss of the transcendent spirit of God for the ideological interpretation:
a kind of literary atheism. And if this parallel with the more fundamental stances of
religion sits uncomfortably with liberal minded writers, it further underlines the depth
of feeling and the theoretical resistance dwelling at the centre of Creative Writing.
4
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
of its twin assumptions of objective, literary value and of an independent writing self.
I
The Pedagogical Mystique
The "creationist" view of writing has a longish history, particularly acute in the
curious 'pedagogical mystique' associated with college and university creative writing
courses. The reasons for this rest primarily in the nature of higher education as a
'national institution'. In contrast to such courses offered through adult education
classes, commercial writing courses, WEA courses, community groups, Arvon
courses, theatre based courses, loose groups of writing friends and so on, there is a
convergence in higher education (particularly English studies in which or in response
to which most creative writing courses are developed) between questions of teaching
and learning writing and those of 'literature' and 'literary value'. Doyle (1982), for
example, describes the historical process by which English Studies came to embody
both 'high culture' and the 'national character' as a process of "nationalisation"
enshrining the text "as the central and supposedly objective element in the study of
literature within higher education, supported by the equally objective-looking notion
of 'literary-value'"(p27-28).
The collision of creative writing courses with this specialised 'national' context of
English studies in higher education accentuates the pedagogical mystique born in the
triad of writing, learning and the 'literary'. This mystique is, perhaps, most visible in
high-profile courses such as the MA in Creative Writing at UEA where, despite
customary disclaimers, the relation between creative writing courses and future
literary recognition is implied, almost in a linear or formulaic manner.
Not withstanding this program's natural wish that its students do well, it does not, of
course, make such claims. Bradbury is very forthright about the question of teaching
1
writing. In one handout , he says that the course "makes no claim to teach those who
are not yet writing how to write"(p1). And in another handout, applicants are told
that:
5
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
relationship between students (published writers or not) who take the course
becoming established, recognised authors remains. This is certainly suggested in
most of the literature on the course: the names of 'recognised' former students
constantly tumble out. Indeed, this seems to be the whole point of yet another
handout written almost in the form of a press release.
Of the around 100 students who have by now passed through the course,
some thirty have made their way as established writers. Some ten novels
by former members appeared in 1989 alone. Its authors have won or been
short-listed for many major prizes: the Whitbread Prize (Ian McEwan,
Kasuo Ishiguro), the Booker Prize (Ian McEwan, Kasuo Ishiguro, Rose
Tremain), the Betty Trask Prize (Glenn Patterson, Paul Houghton), the
Dylan Thomas and Angel Prizes (Rose Tremain), the Somerset Maugham
Award (Clive Sinclair, Ian McEwan, Deirdre Madden), the Rooney Prize
(Deirdre Madden), the Ian St. James Short Story Prize (David Rose) and
other notable literary awards. Several of these authors were chosen as
among the twenty "Best of Young British Novelists" in 1982.
While you may not be 'taught', the clear suggestion here, and reinforced in another
handout, is that given "firm motivation towards writing ... already produced work,
whether published or not, with a defined direction" you may be 'developed' towards a
'recognised' published author.
If this 'pedagogical mystique' manifests itself in the UEA course in the literary
recognition of some of its students, in the case of the many other less known creative
writing courses, its manifestation rests in the various forms of intellectual and
academic resistance which they have faced. Thick and widespread in institutions of
Higher Education, this resistance has traditionally surfaced in the form of arguments
that 'creative writing' is not a sufficiently rigorous discipline. Neither is it something
that can be formally taught (or learned) or assessed. You are either a good writer or
2
not. In a paper about the setting up of an undergraduate creative writing course at
University College, Cardiff, John Freeman (1987) wrote:
And Freeman's experience is not solely confined to the more traditionally minded
universities. Writing in the same collection, Susanna Gladwin (1987) explains how
her experience of setting up a writing course at Middlesex Polytechnic met with:
Indeed she saw opposition to writing courses as so virulent, it was not considered
propitious to confront it head on. As a result of her experience she suggests a host of
strategies for "introducing writing courses into the often hostile environment of HE
degree courses", including not calling the course 'creative writing', linking it with
other terms such as 'rhetoric' (which suggest a "higher academic approach") and/or
"respectable 'skills' courses, such as languages and computing" and looking to other
departments such as Communications or Media Studies. Perhaps the most telling
strategy Gladwin suggests, however, revolves around course design. Design the
writing creative course, she suggests:
This relationship of course design to academic respectability is one that, in one guise
or another, surfaces regularly. It reflects the resistance teachers are getting. In a
paper entitled "Teaching Creatively, not Teaching Creativity" (1989), David Craig,
director and teacher of the MA program in creative writing at the University of
Lancaster echoes Gladwin's concerns:
Politically, it is true, we may well have to recognise that now and again it
is difficult to maintain respect for our subject or hold its slender beach-
head in the curriculum, without hardening it into a set of impressive
formulae: the sort of xeroxed A4 sheets, with numbered paragraphs and a
tidy little book-list at the end, which committees feel at ease with. ... What
we have to remember is that the committees and monitorial personages
who demand that we codify our ways are very probably sceptical about
creative writing as a subject. ... our subject has never managed to be more
than marginal on the campuses (contrast America!) and has to justify itself
7
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
In some courses the relation between respectability and design is not explicitly made,
although it may still be implicit. The East Anglia MA course, for example, is
designed with a formal critical element including formal essays, written examinations
and so on. And while there is no evidence that these elements of the course exist
simply as strategies to defend the 'creative' writing element against charges of lack of
academic respectability and rigour, it does, nevertheless, provide such a bulwark.
The suggestion here is that academic resistance to creative writing has been
internalised, the implication being that the writing-centred elements of the course do
not warrant academic respectability on their own. They are too intangible, too
3
mysterious to be taught, assessed or encompassed in the academic tradition.
In an article in The Independent Magazine comparing the East Anglia MA course and
a similar creative writing program at Columbia University in New York, Mark
Lawson (1990) sums up this notion of pedagogical suspicion and 'mystique'. Echoing
David Craig's point (briefly alluded to above), he implies that the victory secured by
creative writing courses in establishing themselves in universities and colleges in
America, suggests that academic resistance is a British phenomenon.
The contrast with the American situation is significant insofar as it presents us with a
context in which both widespread academic resistance to creative writing courses
appears to have been surmounted, and in which there is strong evidence that creative
writing courses do produce professional writers. Nevertheless, in America, too, this
notion of a 'pedagogical mystique' refuses to lie down. Writer, Eve Shelnutt (1989)
of the Ohio University MFA (Masters of Fine Art) program, for example, raises
(albeit dismissively) the "question that has plagued MFA programs since their
inception, namely, can creative writing be taught?"(p7)
8
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
and extent in America. Joseph Moxley (1989) notes that such courses have been
available in America for 60 years, beginning with the Iowa program in 1936. They
have prospered so well that Dana Gioia writes in the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic
Monthly that "there are now about 200 graduate creative writing programs in the
4
United States, and more than a thousand undergraduate ones" (p95) . He calculates
that with an average of ten poetry students per graduate program, in the next decade
alone there will be 20,000 more 'accredited' professional poets. Even more striking is
Shelnutt's (1989) assertion that:
The depth and breadth of these programs in America, suggesting the collapse of the
grudging sort of academic acceptance evident in Britain, implies there is a consensus
among American practitioners that creative writing can be adequately
"taught/assessed" and, furthermore, that graduates go on to become 'recognised'
writers. Significantly, it is the meaning of 'recognised' which is of central importance
here. The proliferation of programs, some claim, has distorted its sense from
recognised 'aesthetic' writer to recognised 'professional' writer. In a controversial
paper entitled "Who killed Poetry", Joseph Epstein (1989) argues, for example, that:
Whereas one tended to think of the modernist poet as an artist ... one tends
to think of the contemporary poet as a professional: a poetry professional.
Like a true professional he is rather insulated within the world of his fellow
professionals. The great majority of poets today live in an atmosphere
almost entirely academic, but it is academic with a difference: not the
world of science and scholarship but that of the creative writing program
and the writing workshop. ... The poets who come out of this atmosphere ...
publish chiefly in journals sheltered by universities, they fly around the
country giving readings and workshops at other colleges and universities.
(p3)
Gioia (1991) reinforces Epstein's concerns, referring to the sheltered academic world
of these academic poets as a bureaucratic subculture which eschews artistic quality as
criteria for defining the poet in favour of professional positioning, objectively
assessed in terms of careers in academic institutions. In this he quotes the critic
Bruce Bawer as observing that:
Extending the argument beyond poetry, Shelnutt echoes Epstein's and Gioia's view.
Like them, she is concerned about the proliferation of small university presses which
have grown along with creative writing programs and have become the mainstay of
publication for writers teaching and/or studying on them. They became a focal point
for measuring the 'professional' writer: for teachers seeking tenure, for departments
seeking to validate the 'seriousness' of their writing programs and, significantly, for
"writing students aiming to 'make it' by publishing first in literary journals before an
assault on New York publishers" (p6).
The crunch of what Epstein, Gioia and Shelnutt are saying, however, goes much
further. Not only has the proliferation of creative writing programs altered the
meaning of 'recognised' writer, it has also resulted in a reduction of artistic quality
and integrity. Poetry, Epstein (1989) writes, has been "... taken out of the world,
chilled in the classroom and vastly overproduced by men and women who are
licensed to write it by degree if not necessarily by talent or spirit" (p16). Likewise,
Gioia (1991) argues that this academic subculture has resulted in the super-abundance
of dull and mediocre poetry through a poetry industry "... created to serve the interests
of the producers and not the consumers. And in the process the integrity of the art has
been betrayed" (p100). Again, extending the argument beyond poetry, Shelnutt
(1989) points to the isolation of creative writing programs in their own academic
world - she differs from Epstein and Gioia in pinpointing the demise of 'quality'
writing in the separation of creative writing programs from English departments not
solely the outside world - as augmenting "publishers economic moves away from
quality literature" (p9). Ironically, then, far from supporting the notion that creative
writing programs in America 'teach' creative writing and produce recognised 'literary'
writers, a significant part of the American experience suggests that such programs as
they are presently constituted contribute to undermining the development of 'literary'
writers.
Of course all of this is based on aesthetic assumptions of literary and poetic quality
and, at that level, it should be noted that both Epstein's and Gioia's essays did not go
5
unanswered. While some writers were in general agreement, noting along with
Bruce Duffy, that these writing programs "crank out ... modest graduates who en
masse can only swamp and further dilute the standards of their art" (p13), many more
questioned the aesthetic assumptions Epstein and Gioia were intent on preserving,
assumptions about the nature of literary quality and its associated canons, big names,
homogeneity and so on. The poet/teacher Toi Dericotte (1989) contends their view
10
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
is narrow and elitist. Epstein's list of the "all-time greats" she notes is "100% white
and 99% male" and perpetuates "racism, classism and sexism in our literature" (p7).
Askold Melnyczuk (1989) takes issue with the idea of a homogeneous literature in a
pluralist society, preferring "the grand cacophony emanating from the alert and
mangy choir of voices serenading us today and don't for an instant regret the absence
of the one big voice booming out its Truth" (p6). And the teacher/writer Bill
Tremblay (1989) charges Epstein and Gioia with arguing on what "is, finally, a matter
of personal taste."(p9)
Tremblay, moreover, suggests that the distinction between writer as 'artist' and writer
as 'professional' is an ideological distinction based on an economic argument
asserting that poetry coming from the subsidised sector of academia somehow fails to
meet the literary standards of that coming from the market place:
Fewer professional poets and fewer mediocre and dull poems. Only those poets of
quality would survive and with 'genuine' audiences. But, Tremblay argues, there is
no intrinsic reason why the structures of academically based writing should be worse
than those subjected to the market place; indeed, he suggests that much of the
'disaster' facing many writers is attributable to "wanting to be taken seriously as poets
in a commercial society", arguing (after Camus) that "a commercial society must
trivialise art, including poetry, to maintain the domination of its myth ..." (ibid). Such
a commercially oriented society leads, he says, to the narrow, ideologically preferred
single canon represented by "big names".
the 'disaster' of attempting to carve out a living writing texts of intrinsic worth. It
assumes that 'literature' is a concrete objective thing, 'makeable' by the writer
irrespective of social relationships and measurable in terms of objective 'literary
value'.
The debate takes its departure in literary 'quality' which, while sounding like a
reasonable starting point - after all what are these creative writing programs doing if
not improving the 'quality' of the student's writing - turns out to be extremely
problematic. Indeed it is at the root of the 'pedagogical mystique' raised above. The
American experience, despite its breadth, has not resolved the issue; if anything it has
highlighted the difficulties. If British resistance to creative writing courses turned on
the question of 'pedagogical mystique' - can it be adequately taught or assessed - the
argument in America also centres on the question: is it being adequately taught and
assessed and are the 'professionals' (teachers/graduates) 'artists' with an audience
beyond the doors of academia.
Moreover, in his essay, "The Future of Creative Writing Programs", George Garrett
(1989) describes a further dilemma associated with this academic professionalisation
of creative writing:
... the new generation of writers goes directly from school into teaching,
thus never really leaving school. No matter how technically proficient they
become, what will become of the sum and substance of their work? (p 58-
59)
While not synonymous with 'quality', "sum and substance" here is related to it: if the
"sum and substance" of the student/writer's work is basically grounded in university
experience, what chance for the 'quality' of the work? Ironically, Garrett addresses
this issue with a call for a 'literary' experience grounded in the university. "We, the
teachers ... need to find ways to make literature more meaningful and practical to the
writer" (ibid p61). In this he echoes Moxley's (1989) call for students to have "a
background in literature and criticism" to enable them "to identify and produce
creative work" (pxvi). Shelnutt (1989) blames institutions and teachers for
undermining students who "aspire to the quality of work" (p7) by separating English
and creative writing departments and thereby fostering "a growing climate of anti-
intellectualism among writing students" (ibid). Students should have a more
thorough grounding in literature, criticism, critical theory as well as composition.
Without such courses, "how will universities continue to make a distinction between
the kind of education provided in a university setting and that provided by
12
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
This debate raises a curious conflict between two kinds of experience: one concerned
that the quality (sum and substance) of the student's writing is undermined by
predominately academic experiences and another that the quality of their writing is
undermined by the failure to provide more of a 'certain kind' of academic experience.
The solution to the paradox lies in the assumption that this 'certain kind' of academic
experience (English studies) differs from that of creative writing departments in the
richness of 'experience' and 'life' it provides. It is a paradox which has historically
been transcended in exactly this manner. In his study of the history of English and
education, Doyle (1989) shows how the 1921 Newbolt report - which proposed a
strategy for national cultural renewal by means of a system of education led by the
universities" (p41) - transcended this same paradox by the appropriation of such
terms as 'experience', 'reality', 'life' and limiting them
... in such a manner as to enable the claim that popular access to all three
can only be gained by means of art which, for the purposes of national
education effectively means English and especially English literature. (p
45)
Ironically (perhaps supremely so), associated with the above paradox is the
implication that whereas the institutionalising of English studies in higher education
safeguards 'literature' and 'literary value' through which it can manipulate the market
in symbolic works, the institutionalising of creative writing in higher education
undermines the production of 'literature' by bypassing the traditional market of
symbolic works for an 'academic' market of symbolic works and workers (academic
professionals). Significantly, the anomalies noted in both the different kinds of
experience and the two different areas of higher education arise against a background
which is chiefly concerned with 'literature' and 'literary value'.
... writing programs do not need to produce more writers ... (but) better
writers for whom the latest fads in fiction and poetry are to be questioned;
writers who envision themselves in a community of intellectuals - a global
community of writers who are able to question American publishing
practices and their effect on literature; writers who know they have a
cultural heritage; and writers who can envision producing that which can
13
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
It is not clear, however, whether this is less a strategy for producing better writers
than a market strategy for supporting the contingent structure of, as Doyle (1989)
argues, an "anti-democratic" "masculinised", "institutionalised" English Literature,
founded "upon a long and contradictory history" (p1).
The important difference to note here is the internalisation of the debate, taking it into
the writing classroom/workshop. In so doing, the focus is on the nature of the
student's experience, particularly the nature of the 'literary' discourse in which the
student is to gather the requisite experience to become a good writer. Shelnutt argues
that the workshop method "whereby students discuss their own writing around elbow-
worn tables" (p8) is limited in this aspect. The workshop method of 'teaching'
creative writing is symptomatic of the isolation of creative writing from English
studies and literature. Garrett (1989), too, believes that student/writers must read
more widely and deeply, noting that workshop teaching methods may be offering too
much of a good thing and creating:
... an odd dependency ... which may not be the best training for the
essentially lonely enterprise of making up poems and stories. As the
Existentialists were always telling us ... "Nobody else can take a bath for
you". (p 61)
Here, again, the invisible hand of the 'pedagogical mystique' is at work. While
providing valuable editorial and peer response, the workshop method, it is argued,
does not address the "lonely enterprise" of writing from personal experience. The
central point here is the nature and diversity of experience and its management, or as
Moxley puts it, "the gathering, shaping and revising of material" (p xiv). If the
workshop does not directly address this problem, what can be done to remedy the
situation? How can the student be aided in this respect? Suggestions range from
extending the students' experience of literature and literary criticism, to extending
their knowledge of the writing process and their competence with craft. However,
while this new approach does not presume (as workshops presumably do) that the
"bath" has been taken or is being taken, it can, at best, only indicate to the student a
certain style of 'literary' bathtub and bath water, it still cannot take it for him or her.
In his essay "Learning to Unwrite", Donald Murray (1989), a teacher keen to initiate
his students in the processes of writing, suggests a similar metaphor:
14
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
guide, paddling them towards the salmon but allowing them to make their
own catch. (p 107-108)
And Lawson (1990) concludes his article on the Columbia and East Anglia programs
with yet another metaphor in the same vein:
7
Each of these metaphors suggests a "leap of faith" into the intangibility of writing.
And this, finally, is at the heart of the 'pedagogical mystique': the use of metaphors
("bathing", "fishing", "driving") to understand writing; the reticence of 'teaching; the
reluctance even to talk about 'teaching'. Pedagogically speaking, Creative Writing is
regarded as intangible or mysterious. And it is so against a background of historical
assumptions embedded in terms such as 'creative', 'literature', 'literati' which are not, I
think, justified. The main assumption is that there is an objective creative
'literature'/'literati' which/whom can be assessed as such and, by implication, writing/
writers which/whom can judged not to be so. It takes as its starting point, the
'product' of creative writing courses in terms of both the text and the writer. And
while on the face of it this may seem to be a perfectly reasonable assumption
(particularly with respect to teaching) it is also one (as indicated above) which leads
to a pedagogical 'swamp' of internal conflicts and anomalies. The burden of these
anomalies demands, in an almost Kuhnian sense, a shift in the approach taken to
creative writing in higher education.
comprehensive six level description of research on the composing process. The first
three levels focus on various empirical methods and techniques for analysing process
through the textual products of the writing process. Level 4 methods, on the other
hand, are concerned with empirical methods examining the writers composing
9
activities . Significantly, despite this difference:
They rightly note that, like text analysis, research on the writers actual activities does
not describe the cognitive writing process directly but rather the 'products' of the
activity: the latter is concerned with "intermediate products, retained and further
processed in the mind, rather than the final products that appear on the written
page"(ibid p44). Nevertheless, they retain the idea of cognitive writing process as an
independent entity existing in the way the objects of physics do. The final two levels
of inquiry - concerned with the "nature of the cognitive system" and how this
"cognitive mechanism works" - consist of testing theoretical constructions of the kind
found "in a theoretically advanced field like physics" (ibid).
The process tradition, moreover, grounds this notion of cognitive independence in the
writing self; in particular in an "expressive self". As noted, for example, by Britton et
10
al (1975) in their widely influential model of student writing , "expressive language
signals the self"(p10). Indeed it underpins its core feature, expressive writing, which
is
... at its most relaxed and intimate, as free as possible from outside
demands, whether those of a task or an audience. It is, at this central point,
free to move easily from participant role into spectator and vice versa.
(p82)
This model differentiates between three mature modes of writing which may be
regarded as lying on a continuum with 'expressive' writing in the middle flanked by
'transactional' writing at one end and 'poetic' writing at the other. In both directions
there is a "move ... from an intimate to a more public audience" (ibid p83): from
expressive self to public other. Of critical importance, here, is the nature of the
expressive self in the two situations. As transactional writing moves out towards
reader, it increasingly "excludes the personal, self-revealing features" (ibid p83).
Moving out to reader in poetic writing, however, leads to a focus on precisely these
16
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
personal features: "the embodiment by the writer of feelings and beliefs becomes
paramount, and what is included in the utterance may be highly personal" (ibid).
Closely associated with the construction of a private expressive self, and 'expressive'
and 'poetic' categories of writing are normative distinctions such as 'authentic' versus
'inauthentic' writing. Arnold (1991) notes, for example, that 'authentic' writing "is
writing which emanates from a writer's search for meaning ... authentic writers need
not be audience aware" (p8-9). And Moffet (1981) writes "that the process of
authentic writing involves tapping the stream of inner speech and focusing it" (p23).
The assumption is that 'authentic' writing is associated with a private inner self.
Closely related with 'authentic' writing is the idea of the writer's 'voice'. 'Voice' in
writing is the authentic manifestation of the self. Writing is authentic if the 'voice' is
permitted to express itself unhindered, to remain its own self. Indeed Elbow (1973)
even went so far as to suggest that students might be better off learning to write in the
"teacherless writing class" (p6) without the conforming pressures of teachers
hindering their unique voices.
If the 'process tradition' tends to regard 'authentic' writing as an activity in which the
writer taps their own, personal inner speech and discovers their own 'real' voice, it
also regards it as a criterion for describing student texts. While noting, for example,
that 'authenticity' is sometimes difficult to 'read', Arnold (1991) still professes that it
gets easier with experience: "at the simplest level, authentic writing sounds genuine.
Contrived writing sounds phoney" (p9). And Gilbert (1989) notes how the 'process
tradition' requires that texts "carry the effect of the 'personal voice' of the student
writer so that the 'honesty' of the 'inner vision' is maintained" (p27). Critical of the
tradition, Moss (1989) notes how it associates good writing with "the personal, the
expressive, the natural" and bad writing with "the second hand, the acquired, the
contrived" (p31). 'Authenticity' here has become a criterion for textual value.
This transfer of 'authenticity' from activity to text locates the value of the text in the
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
The creative tasks that students are asked to write are linked not only to the
concept of original expression, of spontaneous response - but also to ... the
unique perceptions of the literary artist. (p60)
There is, here, a crucial parallel with the pedagogical conflict described earlier
between creative writing in higher education and the sum & substance (or absence of
it) of the individual's 'real' (non higher education) experience. Historically, it was
resolved with the assumption that English studies reflect reality, life and experience.
The conflict raised in the encounter between the 'authentic' expressive self and certain
constructed literary forms of writing is similarly resolved with the assumption that
these forms of English studies are precisely the forms of textual 'authenticity'.
Assumptions of the Process Tradition and those of the Pedagogical Mystique
converge on just this point: that the real, original, spontaneous, authentic 'voice' is
naturally aligned with those 'literary' forms and styles which English Studies embody.
II
Towards A New Theory
The accumulating conflicts and anomalies disclosed in the above discussion
necessitate a radical shift in thinking about Creative Writing, a shift which, in the first
instance, suspends the two main pillars of creationism: assumptions of independent
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
The central error of expressivist theory ... is the failure to acknowledge the
fact that meaning is always produced, it is never simply expressed. (p166)
... the view that human action could not be fully or properly accounted for
from the inside out - by reference only to intrapsychic dispositions, traits,
learning capacities, motives or whatever. Action required for its
explication that it be situated, that it be conceived of as continuous with a
cultural world. The realities that people constructed were social realities,
negotiated with others, distributed between them. The social world in
which we lived was, so to speak, neither "in the head" nor "out there" in
some positive aboriginal form. And both mind and the self were part of
that social world. (ibid, p105-6)
In this respect, the roots of conception reside in the work of educationalists describing
student learning in terms of categories of practical understanding embedded in
specific academic situations as well as those challenging traditional categories of
'literature' and 'literacy'. It provides, moreover, the ground for a theory delineating
useful learning distinctions which not only shed important light on our knowledge of
the activity of writing, but also, because of its distinctive relationship with learning,
on a host of 'literary' and pedagogical issues.
Within the writing context conception goes beyond the writer's abstract consciousness
of their text (as aesthetic or literary construction) and their cognitive writing
'processes', to encompass a richer, concrete understanding of writing within the social
situation. It incorporates the reader in what Bakhtin (1986) calls the "addressivity" of
writing: that aspect of being "directed to someone", an "addressee", who may vary
from "an immediate participant-locutor in an everyday dialogue (to) ... an indefinite,
unconcretized other" p95. It embodies what Williams (1977) means by the writer's
material consciousness: the "experience of the production of objects, which, from our
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
deepest sociality, go beyond not only the production of commodities but also our
ordinary experience of objects"(p162). It denotes, what Pattison (1982) describes in
terms of 'literacy' as "consciousness of the questions posed by language coupled with
mastery of those skills by which a culture at any given moment in its history
manifests this consciousness"(p5). Conception may also be usefully described in
terms of what it is not: 'aesthetic' or 'qualitative' literacy describing a capacity to
distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' writing, grounded in the idea, as Doyle (1989)
shows, that "to ask whether a piece of writing is 'literature' is to ask whether it is
'good'"(p120).
12
Recent research in learning theory , moreover, provides a way of describing
contrasting types of conception within a dialogical perspective. Very briefly, this
research has identified a range of general learning conceptions which can be divided
into two categories: reproducing conceptions in which the student "uses meaning",
memorises and reproduces material, and transforming conceptions in which the
student "makes meaning", understands and transforms material. Central to this work
is the recognition that learning is not well described in terms of the acquisition of
facts or knowledge but rather in terms of "a change of conception" (Dahlgren 1984)
regarding a particular area and practice. Significant learning may be described as a
change from a reproducing to a transforming conception. Learning vis-a-vis Creative
Writing, then, consists of a change in the student-writer's material consciousness of
writing.
vary in individual practice, particularly within the two main categories. The study
13
disclosed a typology of six distinct conceptions in two categories (Table 1).
TABLE 1
Student Conceptions of Creative Writing
The second dimension of reader awareness (at the readership level) concerns readers
in socio-cultural situations, using specific forms: readers as readership. Williams
(1977) writes of such forms that they are "the common property ... of writers and
audiences or readers, before any communicative composition can occur" (p187-188).
The distinction here is whether or not the student "assents to" or "dissents from" the
prevailing forms (discourse) embraced by his/her readership.
The second feature of conception is cohesion and refers to the nature and
connectedness of the 'work' in which the student is engaged during the activity of
writing, particularly in terms of the kind of conventions (notational vs elemental) and
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
the kind of judgements (material oriented vs writing oriented) with which they were
most concerned. The third feature, range, refers to the nature and origin of (personal
and public) writing forms which the writer sees his/her work taking. The six types of
student conception of creative writing can be described in terms of these three
features.
TYPE II (Documenting-Limited): The writer readily accepts that he/she is writing for
a reader, but primarily at the level of their material: they want to capture an
experience, a scene, an idea, transcribe or document it the way they see or feel it and
"hopefully as well ... say ... something to somebody else." How the reader will read it
is an incidental situation over which they feel they have little control, "detached"
from the activity of writing. Concern mainly focuses on notational conventions and
the writing "works" if the material/experience is interesting, communicated and/or
meets course requirements. While recognising different forms and genres, their
choice is often limited to general forms (fiction, poetry, drama) and those taken from
course exercises.
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
TYPE V (Narrating-Extended): The writer is, again, writing within a discourse, the
forms and features of which are accepted and positively endorsed. Again, they
"narrate" their meanings vis-à-vis meanings shared with the reader, reflecting on and
(within the material activity of writing) integrating their material with the
comprehensibility requirements of the readers sharing this discourse. These
conceptions are, however, characterised by a more extended and internalised
understanding and use of the shared forms, elemental conventions, techniques and so
on.
TYPE VI (Critiquing): The writer integrates reader and readership (discourse) within
the material activity of writing, but there is also evidence of a dissent from and a
critique of particular aspects of both that discourse and its integration. In this respect
the comprehensibility requirements of the reader are both challenged and integrated.
This critical dissent may consist in a dissenting critique of the practice of creative
writing itself (re-integrated in the writing) and/or might consist of a dissenting
critique of a wide variety of discourse issues, forms, elemental conventions and
techniques of that practice.
being constitutive of conception and learning. Most significantly, it was found that
14
these issues tended to 'gravitate' around a dominant text-based 'literary' authority, an
'authority', moreover, perceived as alien and inaccessible to a wide range of excluded
experience and meaning. Across the typology of conceptions, it was often found to
redefine negatively the conflicts in shared meaning, arising with respect to social and
academic issues, insinuating them into the student's conception of writing. In this
respect, the authority of 'literature' significantly restricted conception development,
15
and seriously obstructed the development of student conceptions and learning.
In the first instance, the significance of this new theoretical perspective is, perhaps,
most acute with respect to the issue of voice. The writer's voice, as noted earlier, has
often been described in terms of fidelity to the contents (experiences, ideas, feelings
etc) of a private, expressive inner self, and is characterised by such terms as
'authenticity' and 'originality'. The 'authentic' voice is the one expressing the writer's
real or natural inner self. Research in this new perspective, however, suggest that
voice is best understood in terms of the writer's material consciousness or conception
of the practice of writing. Voice is not 'authentic' or 'phoney' but 'integrated' or
'detached'. As such, it is not simply a function of the writer but of the socio-cultural
situation in which the writer is writing. "Finding ones voice" is best described in
terms of the integration of one's material and reader (within the particular situated
readership) in the writing activity. Voice is neither determined in terms of the
originality or authenticity of the writer's self (ideas, feelings, experiences) nor in
terms of the authoritative literary or aesthetic 'quality' of the discourse forms with
which he/she is working, but rather in terms of their situated conception of writing.
If this crucial recognition and redescription of voice in terms of the dialogical notion
of concepti on displaces (or repositions) normative terms such as 'authenticity',
'originality' and 'creativity' from their hitherto central position in writing, it also
dislodges parallel descriptions of 'literary quality'. The formula by which voice
'authenticity' is transformed into a criterion for textual 'value', in which 'authentic'
writing voices are regarded as producing writing which is 'true', 'authentic', 'original',
and corresponding 'authentic', 'original' texts imbued with intrinsic 'literary' quality
collapses. The historical relationship between subjective authentic voice/expression
and objective literary text, is, here, displaced and redefined in terms of the social
realm of material practice/understanding, inclusive of writer, writing, text and writing
situation. As such, the typology of conception developed in this study provides a
radical new basis for redefining, analysing and critiquing 'literary' practice. And in so
doing, it reclaims "literature", in Williams' (1983a) words as "the full active interests
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
of students, including those interests which stem from a love of writing and from a
human concern for all its conditions and materials and possibilities" (p215).
Finally, it is worth saying that this perspective supports assertions such as Eagleton's
(1983) that "literature (as text) does not exist in the sense that insects do"(p16), that
there is no intrinsic or transcendent literary quality to a text over and above the socio-
cultural situation in which it is written and read. Indeed, the research provides
compelling evidence that 'literary' discourses suggesting such claims to
'transcendence' undermine and inhibit the student's very conception of their practice.
Indeed, this reveals a much more perfidious disenfranchisement than one which
defines certain texts/discourses as aesthetically 'inferior' (less authentic, original and
so on) to one in which a dominant literary authority, permeating, to some extent, all
writing, hinders and marginalises the writer's very consciousness of their practice.
The first point to stress is that the debate over the general design of creative writing
courses and programs (eg "exercise" based vs "workshop" based) must speak to much
more fundamental issues than hitherto assumed. However rigorous, pedagogical
focus at this level is not sufficient. Moxley (1989), for example, sums up the
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
Insofar as creative writing courses are aimed at comprehensive student learning and
understanding - not simply the production of polished, 'publishable' texts meeting
particular 'literary' criteria - such courses need to address the question of conception
across the whole gamut of course design, teaching and assessment issues. These are
issues, I believe, which a course is only able to properly address in a comprehensive
'dialogue' with the student. Indeed, the issue of learning conflicts needs to be
disclosed with students, particularly with respect to the nature, categories and types of
conception. This should be undertaken moreover against a background critique of the
role which an historically dominant literary paradigm plays in relation to the social
and course issues impinging on conception.
Such a strategy requires, for example, a critique (collective and individual) of the
'literary authority' prevailing in the situation in which they are writing; whatever its
complexion (age, gender class, ethnicity etc), or form (institution, teacher, assigned
texts, methods of assessment etc). The object is neither to reconstruct another
'authority' (which might also be exclusive and detrimental to the development and
formation of individual conceptions), nor to engage simply in a critique of the
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
The most fervid implications, perhaps, are concerned with the broader contemporary
debate within which creative writing has been recently situated. This debate sets
literary theory against writing; interpretation against composition, and embodies what
Bradbury (1992) calls the "growing fissure between 'creation' and 'theory'"(p8).
Contemporary literary theory, he argues
John Carey (1994) similarly argues that theory decrees "... authors should not be
regarded as the originators of their work; it rejected the idea of people as free agents
with individual inner selves"; that "people are not autonomous selves, but are
16
controlled by social networks and cultural codes"(p3).
The theory proposed in this paper provides, I believe, a fresh perspective on this
debate. It suggests that while contemporary theoretical critiques may succeed in
'deconstructing' the idea of Author as a kind of transcendent 'creator' tapping into an
aesthetic realm inaccessible to other mortals, they do not displace the more dynamic
notion of writer as individual grounded in his/her socio-cultural situation
(characterised, not 'controlled', by it). Redefining writer in dialogical terms (inclusive
of writing experience, practice and 'voice'), does not impoverish him or her. Indeed, it
releases the writer from the myths and constraints of subjective, transcendental
aesthetics, from Bradbury's "fundamental form of quest for the supreme fiction"
(ibid). It enriches their writing practice, grounding it in the social material of their
experience, imagination, ideas, feelings, allowing the writer to recognise more clearly
his/her relationship with their readership. It frees the writer from the cheap, artificial
hunt for the supremely aesthetic/literary text and/or experience. It allows him/her to
"shape, develop, discover, contradict, divert and subvert" (ibid) their own material
realm of experience and imagination in conjunction with a readership, free of the
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
constant, external and internal barrage that the writing is not or may not be
17
sufficiently 'aesthetic' or 'literary'.
Freeing writer from the constraints of Author does not displaces the writer's
individuality, personal voice or creativity. It argues, rather, that he/she is
characterised by dialogical experience and imagination within a real cultural
situation, and by his/her personal understanding of these as individually initiated and
enacted in the material act of writing. While this may have theoretical repercussions
for transcendent descriptions of both Author and Text, it does not have such
repercussions for individual descriptions of the writer or their practice.
Postscript
It is the very nature of Creative Writing, or at least the quirky role which our culture
has assigned to it - on the one hand a kind of 'trivial' self-centred hobby left alone
quietly to get on with its own personal pre-occupations and on the other a practice
from which 'serious literature' might emerge - that underlines its historical, some may
say self-imposed, exile to a theoretical Siberia. The gaping chasm at the centre of its
fusion of the 'serious' and the 'trivial' has, hitherto, been bridged in a 'creationist' leap
resistant to all but 'mystical' theory, grounded in assumptions of subjective
'originality/authenticity' and transcendent 'literary value'. It has been this paper's aim
to critique those assumptions and to reconstruct Creative Writing as a cultural
practice grounded in the writer's conception or material consciousness. In so doing, I
am proposing a new theoretical perspective of this practice, constitutive of all its
material attributes from experience to publication.
28
The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
Notes
1. The references here to UEA "notes" and "handouts" are respectively to: "Notes on
the University of East Anglia's work in Creative Writing" (23.3.1990); "The MA in
Creative Writing" (undated); "MA Course in Creative Writing": (undated); "Notes on
the University of East Anglia's work in Creative Writing" (23.3.1990). For copies,
see Light (1995) "Appendix 1.1 (p377)", The Literature of the Unpublished: Student
Conceptions of Creative Writing in Higher Education, Phd Dissertation, the Institute
of Education, University of London, 1995.
2. The references here to papers in the VAA Pact, are respectively to: paper 8
"Creative Writing in a University English Course" and paper 9 "Introducing a Writing
Course at a Polytechnic". For copies, see Light (1995) "Appendix 1.2 (p387)".
4. The 1990-91 AWP Official Guide to Writing Programs lists 219 graduate
programs (137 MA's; 48 MFA's'; 25 PhD's; 3 DA's; 1 MAET; 1 MPW; 4 MS;
1MTSC).
5. For a fuller debate on these issues, see the May 1989 issue of the AWP Chronicle
which was devoted primarily to solicited responses to Epstein's essay from writers,
critics and teachers.
6. For an analysis of the structure of English studies encompassing this paradox, see
Comely & Scholes (1983) and Scholes (1985). "The field of English", the latter
writes, "is organised by two primary gestures of differentiation". In the first, the field
is divided between "literature and nonliterature" and in the second between "the
production and consumption of texts" (p5). English Department produce, at best,
'pseudo-non-literature' (creative writing). The reason for this, he writes, is the
unstated priority given to texts produced 'outside' academia to those produced 'inside'.
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
What is 'real' (sum & substance) is linked "to a 'reality' outside academic life" (ibid).
He also distinguishes between the proper consumption of 'literature' which "we call
'interpretation'" and "the consumption of 'non-literature' ... called 'reading'" (ibid 5-6).
In this respect, Paula Johnson (1980) also makes a useful distinction between 'outside'
literary texts and 'inside' student texts: "Student texts are not merely there waiting to
be studied; they are elicited in order to be improved."
8. It is worth noting that while Odell et al (1978) were writing over 15 years ago that
a focus on the writing process was providing the assumptions for an "emerging
paradigm" (p2), more recent writers in the area suggest the establishment of this
paradigm. Anne Kinmont (1990) notes, for example, that while "many of the recent
studies of the writing process, of writing performance and of writing development,
have, predictably, introduced new areas for exploration" (p109) and differ
considerably in their areas of concern, they nevertheless share many pedagogical
assumptions; assumptions which, Pam Gilbert (1989) writes, constitute "what appears
to be a constructed 'shared world view' on the part of English education writers and
researchers" (p15).
10. For a full description of this model and other closely related models, see Britton
(1970, p174), Britton et al (1975 p81-83) and Emig (1971, p37).
11. In particular, see Greg Light (1995b) "Avoiding the Issue: Student Perceptions
of Creative Writing" in Writers in Education No5 (Spring 1995, p5-9) and Wendy
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
Paper given at Conference on Creative Writing, Middlesex University, London, U.K., November 1996.
12. For recent discussions of this research, see Light (1995a); Ramsden (1992);
Entwistle & Entwistle (1992); Marton (1988); Ramsden (ed. 1988); Entwistle (1987);
Marton, Hounsell, Entwistle (1984); Saljo (1979).
13. For an in-depth discussion of the subject matter described in this section, see
Light The Literature of the Unpublished: Student Conceptions of Creative Writing in
Higher Education, (chapters 7-10) Phd Dissertation, the Institute of Education,
University of London, 1995. See also Light (1995) "How Students Understand and
Learn Creative Writing in Higher Education" Writers in Education (No7, Winter
1995/96) and Light (1996) "The Limits of Literature: Creative Writing in the
University Classroom: Two Case Studies" Writers in Education (No9, Summer
1996).
14. The term 'literary' is being used here to describe issues linked to the textual
paradigm of literary quality and value exemplified in the writings of certain
recognised writers, writers 'in' the canon; writers claimed by specialised categories of
literary criticism etc.
15. It should be noted, however, that conflicts in shared meaning are not detrimental
of themselves (indeed in a few cases it aided the development of a critiquing
conception) but rather the perceived 'exclusivity' of the premises and 'meanings'
associated with the prevailing literary discourse was such that the student was unable
to fully enter it and work within it at an 'integrated' or 'meaning making' level.
16. For some recent debates on this subject, see Bradbury (1994) in The Independent;
Bradbury (1992) in the Times Literary Supplement; (1994) in the Books section of the
Sunday Times; Illis (1994) in The Sunday Times. See also the debates in AWP
Chronicle, particularly Volume 25, numbers 1, 2 &3. For an in depth debate see the
contributions of Echo, Rorty, Culler and Brooke-Rose in Echo Interpretation and
Over-interpretation (1992). In America, moreover, R.M. Berry (1994) writes that "in
a series of recent articles Marjorie Perloff, Peter Stitt; Reginald Gibbons, Donald
Morton and Maslud Zavarzadeh have all indicated that the widest division in
contemporary literature departments is that between Creative Writing and critical
theory ..." (p67). Referring to Stanley Fish's (1980) theoretical critique of text, Berry
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sums this division up neatly when he writes that "for the vast majority of American
liberal arts students, questions like "what makes this text a poem?" are matters, not of
theory, but of Creative Writing" (ibid p57).
17. This theory and the research upon which it is based, coincides with, indeed
provide powerful evidence for the position Scholes (1985) describes in Textual
Power:
My position is that the debate ... - between a view that holds authorial
intention irrelevant and an opposed view that authorial intention is decisive
- admits of no resolution. ... Both of these notions will have to be
abandoned ... The missing ingredient in all these formulations is the
cultural system in which all of these individualities - the writer, the reader,
and the text - take shape and have their being. (p47)
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The Literature of the Unpublished: Towards a Theory of Creative Writing in Higher Education.
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