Fiction, intuition, & creativity: studies in Bronte, James, Woolf, and Lessing

Abstract

This volume is a search for the origins of fiction and for an understanding of how these origins influence the finished work of art. It examines the connection between the creative process and fictional form by discussing how intuitive consciousness provides the environment in which creativity flourishes and how writers make use of intuitive creativity in their novels. Looking first at how the link between intuition and creativity has been explored in philosophy, psychology and aesthetics by thinkers such as Henri Bergson, William James, Carl Jung and Benedetto Croce, the book proceeds to an extended discussion of what novelists reveal about the workings of their creative processes, focusing on the intuitive dimension of aesthetic activity. This includes the role of the unconscious and of emotion, the need for an incubation period before the novel emerges into consciousness, and the sense that characters inhabit the control of their authors.