Reading Literary Theory between the Lines of Creative Writing: The Dialectics of Theory and Practice in the Creative Writing Pedagogy

Spyros Kiosses

doi:10.47191/ijsshr/v4-i7-07

Abstract

Literary theory and critical writing have been traditionally perceived as being in tension, either silently ignoring or polemically rejecting each other. In this paper we argue that literary theory and creative writing are interconnected on various levels. By acknowledging this fact, theory may be profitably deployed in the creative writing class, in order to enhance creative writers’ sense of literary mechanisms, conventions, and purposes in specific sociocultural contexts. In this way, theory informs students not only in relation to the poetics, but also to the pragmatics of the literary phenomenon. Theory askes creative writers to contemplate on how they themselves are socially, ideologically and culturally positioned as writers (and as readers) of literature, and how their activity is enmeshed in a broader process of personal and communal identity formation through language and literary representation.

Highlights

“real” the writer tries to render his/her textual self, the latter is always a construct, a fictional character that abides by the laws and the craft of plot and character sketching. This fact is especially evident, apart from autobiographical texts, in all first-person writings. It is of utter importance for creative writers to be able to distinguish between the entities of the concrete author, the abstract author, the narrator, and the character, as this is a means of better understanding the function of narrative works and the generation of meaning in the narrative genre, in general
Theory is already present in the creative writing workshop, even if unadmitted (Parras, 2005, p. 158)
If a systematic introduction to theoretical issues is accepted in creative writing classes, students may have easy and prompt access to an array of concepts, techniques, principles, and methods that have been deployed by antecedents in their literary production; these may be profitably used to enhance and enrich their own writing practice, and to generate new practice

Summary

INTRODUCTION

A multifaceted contention between literary theory and creative writing has been noted by scholars and practitioners in both areas, the former supposedly being “abstract and rigorous, governed by the dictates of logic and reason”, “expository, rhetorical, scholarly, objective”; the latter being “concrete and sensuous, subject to the caprice and impulse of inspiration”, as well as “imaginat ive, paratactic, impressionistic, subjective” (Parras, 2005, p. 157; cf. Iamarino, 2015, Parini, 1994). As put by Morley (2013, p. 38) “literary theory generally has little impact on the way creative writers go about their business”.2 Such a disharmony or even conflict between literary theory and creative writing seems to date back to the first emergence of the latter as a subject in American Universities, while the perceived schism between it and theory is sometimes considered “as a means of retaining this disciplinary identity. 38) “literary theory generally has little impact on the way creative writers go about their business”.2 Such a disharmony or even conflict between literary theory and creative writing seems to date back to the first emergence of the latter as a subject in American Universities, while the perceived schism between it and theory is sometimes considered “as a means of retaining this disciplinary identity. The necessary common ground shared by theory and practice calls for a theoretically informed approach of teaching and studying creative writing Such an approach is, imperative as Creative Writing Studies is an increasingly expanding academic discipline worldwide, in an on-going and dynamic process of (re)defining its theoretical, critical, and pedagogic conditions in the area of the Humanities and Cultural Studies (Dawson, 2015; Ward, 2018). We will discuss only a few areas of convergence between literary theory and creative writing practice: certain theoretical assumptions about the aim and purpose of creative writing, in general, as well as issues of genre, author, authority, and representation

THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT CREATIVE WRITING

CONCLUSION