Olson: Intro

Elder Olson's Tragedy and the Theory of Drama is one of the relatively (and unfortunately) small number of critical works that prioritizes literary production over literary interpretation.

In his introduction, Olson frames his perspective like so:

I have attempted to see tragedy—indeed, as much as possible the whole of drama—from a point of view of the working dramatist. The problems of the dramatist, the technical means for their solution, the principles governing the different methods of solution comprise the subject of this book. (2)

I'd like to do something similar, I'd like to attempt to see Theory from the point of view of the working writer. However, there are some problems with this sort of statement, mostly in the form of definite articles: the point of view of the working writer.

The first of these articles assume that working writers can, at least in their attitude toward Theory, can be lumped together into a unified "point of view", which is of course false. Writers have all sorts of different attitudes about Theory: some are enthusiasts, some antagonists; some pick and chose, others disregard it entirely.

The second of these definite articles assumes that writers as writers can be lumped together under the heading of something called "the working writer." The "work" of writing is different for each writer. Each has his/her own process, a unique (or at least importantly differentiated) approach to the "problems" of the writing task, and not all of their "solutions" are technical ones.

Writers do different things when they write, have different ideas about the significance of their task, its relation to Theory, and hold their own opinions about whether or not Theory and creative practice have anything to say to one another.

Of course, I make a similar error when I use the term "Theory," as if there were a discernible body of written work that could be unified in such a way that it could be introduced in opposition to something called "writing" or "writers." Perhaps I should say "literary criticism," or something similar. Still, whatever "Theory" is, people in CW are talking about it, sometimes as if it were a foe.

I think it's better to say something like this: "I have attempted to read Theory on behalf of working writers—that is, with the general interests of writers and their various writing processes in mind."

Even that statement makes a generalization, but I think its a more reasonable one. Writers have in common at least that they write, and their position as writers gives them some common ground in relation to Theory and its various treatments of the author.

Olson, Elder. Tragedy and the Theory of Drama. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966. Print.

Mayers: second half

Mayers gives us a whole chapter on Heidegger. Not a lot to report from that.

Then a chapter on his terms for a possible alliance between comp and CW. Mostly institutional, which is not really my bag.

But he does finally give up his remedy for institutional-conventional wisdom. This is Mayer's big moment, as far as my interests are concerned:

The relation of poetic craft to rhetoric...is a potentially productive direction. Closer attention to rhetoric—to poetry's potential for persuasion or to the myriad variations in audiences for poetry, for example—would not force poets, in their institutional roles as teachers of creative writing, to abandon any concern with formalism. But it would certainly move formalism into a different context. Assuming a rhetorical perspective on poetic production would compel those in creative writing to consider poetry as a social practice, to consider the material conditions that regulate the publication of poetry, and to work through the consequences of these conditions for those who write poetry and those who read it. In short, the rhetorical perspective...would align creative writers much more closely with their colleagues in composition. (122)

He goes on later about his plan for reforming English. He wants "Writing Studies" as a separate department, which takes care of the intro comp course, and all the writing courses. Makes sense, but it's a huge power grab, and I can't imagine the English folks going for it.

He does some decent work when talking about his suggestions for revising the introductory creative writing course:

the New Critic's insistence on the autonomy of the poem persists more tenaciously in creative writing classrooms than anywhere else...Creative writing pedagogy...primarily focuses on the text's formal and aesthetic qualities, letting social and political considerations into classroom discourse infrequently, intermittently, and usually only with the implication that such considerations are of a lower order than formal and aesthetic ones. (139)

Later in the chapter, he paraphrases another CW instructors story regarding a student who wrote a poem about being abused by her Uncle when she was a child. When the instructor attempted to offer constructive criticism of the technical aspects of the poem, the class looked at her with scorn and one of her students suggested that the author should be praised for her courage, not critiqued for her art.

Mayers feels this type of situation

provides an excellent opportunity to raise questions about the function of poetry within a larger culture. Such a poem—a narrative of abuse—can provide an entry point for class discussion geared toward clarifying the uses and purposes toward which such rhetoric might be employed. Students might be asked to consider, for instance, whether there is a significant difference between narrating childhood abuse in a poem—then submitting the poem for consideration in the rhetorical context of the classroom—and talking about such abuse on a daytime talk show or in a support group. Students might be asked to consider the rhetorical effects of submitting such a poem for classroom discussion...[The teacher] might have asked the class members to think critically about their own reactions to the poem. Why were they inclined toward silence or praise? Ultimately, the class could consider the following questions: Is poetry a particularly effective medium for // confession or for narratives of abuse? How does poetry differer from other media in this regard? When someone writes a narrative of abuse in the form of a poem, what social and rhetorical consequences are being sought? In the case of this particular poem, what—if anything—must be done in order for such a consequence to be realized? (147-148)

These last two questions seem to me to the be the heart of Mayers's pedagogical approach. Student creative work is to be considered from a social and rhetorical perspective, and these questions are central to that type of consideration.

Mayers book is helpful in its suggestions of the value of a rhetorical emphasis for CW. His ambitions for institutional reform I have no use for. Which means there are only a few key quotes to pull. A few leads here and there.

Rhetorical emphasis ties into the political consideration of creative production in the U.S., so I think this may turn out to be a useful piece.

Leads

Bawarshi, Anis S. "Beyond Dichotomy: Toward a Theory of Divergence in Composition Studies." JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 17.1 (1997): 69-82.

This one looks good. It's an effort to balance ideas that writing comes from an individual mind with ideas that writing is purely socially constructed.

Mayers chapters 1 and 2

Mayers, Tim. (Re)Writing Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 2005. Print.

I didn't dogear too many of the first 60-some pages. He's just laying the groundwork, as far as I can tell. Maybe I'm not deep enough in the conversation yet to get all the nuances of what he's doing...

He spends some time defining the "institutional-conventional wisdom" of creative writing, placing more emphasis on the hyphenated adjective than the noun, which he may even mean ironically. Or cynically. Maybe he's not a fan of "wisdom."

He's particularly interested in positioning CW in terms of the institutions within English studies. Strikes me as important, but dry. I'm more interested in seeing what he eventually proposes as an antidote to "wisdom."

Anyway, here's his pitch:

Briefly summarized, this institutional-conventional wisdom holds that creativity or writing ability is fundamentally "interior" or "psychological" in nature and that it is thus the province only of special or gifted individuals and is fundamentally unteachable. What *is* teachable in creative writing...is "craft," which is understood in this context as a collection of skills or techniques that writers can explore or use to demonstrate their creativity. Those people who possess the right kind of creative talent, if they can learn to master craft, can produce "serious writing" or works of "literature" that are aesthetically distinguishable from other kinds of texts. (14)

In his second chapter, Mayers introduces his concept of "craft criticism," which would seem to arise from the "wisdom" mentioned above, since his explanation of conventional wisdom relies heavily on the idea of craft, although it strikes me that, by his definition, craft criticism could cover a much wider swath of writing than simply that :

Craft criticism...refers to critical prose written by self- or institutionally identified "creative writers"; in craft criticism, a concern with textual production takes precedence over any concern with textual interpretation. (34)

See what I mean? Any critical prose by a creative writer focusing on the act of writing qualifies. Even if it doesn't subscribe to the "wisdom" mentioned above. So I'm guessing whatever Mayers comes up with will count as craft criticism, too. And as it develops, I believe his idea of craft criticism includes works that challenge the institutional-conventional wisdom of CW, which makes his definitions a bit awkward. If wisdom is all about craft, and craft criticism challenges wisdom, then craft challenges craft, more or less, which doesn't really make any sense. At least not in the abstract.

Everybody cites Myers (Elephants Teach), and Mayers is no exception. He visits Myers reading of the relation between criticism and CW, which finds the two closely related in history. Both entered the Academy at the same time, replacing "philology" (what is that?). Further, most of the "critics" were also "poets" and criticism was informed by their own practice of writing.

Mayers suggests that Myers account almost conflates criticism and CW, and mistakenly so since criticism became "institutionalized as an almost exclusively interpretive enterprise" (42). Instead, Mayers draws upon David Richter's schematization of literary criticism to suggest that craft criticism should be more closely identified with what Richter calls "rhetorical" criticism. This resonates with something I was thinking, which is that the Chicago School, contemporaries of the New Critics, were actually producing work closer to contemporary CW work. Crane and Olson and (later) Booth, are Rhetoricians at work in the field of CW. I think any study of the relationship of New Criticism to early CW should not leave these Chicago guys out. I remember one paper called "seven types of clarity" written in response to the more famous seven ambiguities; as I recall, this article (and the other Chicago stuff) took exception to the New Critical "fallacies" in a way that would provide a useful corrective to the contemporary CW talk about "formalism." Mayers would be a useful source for this:

Despite the fact that many of the New Critics were poets, their primary concerns...were formal and not rhetorical. New Criticism rapidly became a way to teach students how to interpret poetry by searching for the poems' own internal structures and rules. Rather than becoming institutionalized as a focus on writing poetry in general, New Criticism became institutionalized as a focus on reading, interpreting, and appreciating particular kinds of poems. (43)

New Criticism, the very movement that helped bring creative writing into the university, also effectively worked to disenfranchise many creative writers from the act of criticism. (44)

Because "close reading" and formal appreciation become dominant, the conversation of English studies move away from interests in production of texts. Interpretation is the focus, and remains so even after the rise of Theory, which simply takes interpretation to its logical extreme.

Mayers then gives a number of examples of craft criticism. Most notable among these is Katherine Haake's book, which is already on my reading list.

And that's it for the first two chapters.



Leads:

Mayers nods to Wendy Bishop, Mary Ann Cain, and Patrick Bizzaro as folks who did the work of informing Creative Writing pedagogy with insights from Composition studies.

He's got three sources for Bishop, in addition to her "Colors of a Different Horse" deal.

"The Literary Text and the Writing Classroom." JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 15.3 (1995): 435-54.

"Places to Stand: The Reflective Writer-Teacher-Writer in Composition." College Composition and Communication 51.2 (1999): 9-31.

Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing. 2nd ed. Portland, ME: Calendar Islands Publishers, 1998.

I'm thinking the book is the way to go...and was what Mayers was referring to as her "pioneering work."

He says this one analyzes student work and "workshoping" with the tools previously only used in comp theory:

Cain, Mary Ann. Revisioning Writer's Talk: Gender and Culture in Acts of Composing. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.

Bizzaro, Patrick gets a bunch of entries, but I think this is the one, and it looks like a *must read* for me:

Responding to Student Poems: Applications of Critical Theory. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

Cites David Richter's The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends as a source of many "maps" of literature, similar to M.H. Abrams. I should check that out before I present my own map again.

Green Article

Green, Chris (2001). 'Materializing the Sublime Reader: Cultural Studies, Reader Response, and Community Service in the Creative Workshop', College English 64.2: 153-74.

Green's project is a good one I think, and really the only sensible response to Fish. He aims to move the workshop out of its strict textual focus and onto issues of audience and what he calls "vernacular interpretive communities." The author has to take responsibility for his/her text and its social status, and the peer reviewers must take the intended audience into account in their critique.

Here's how he explains it:

As the fierce and thoughtful work of multicultural scholars has shown, the differences in readerships and cultural values are not only historically but currently myriad. An effective piece of poetry to one interpretive community will not necessarily seem interesting or well done to another. In addition to writing well and having a broad literary background, our students should learn how to speak to chosen vernacular interpretive communities and their literary traditions...writers do best when they learn how to write better poems for those communities they wish to serve. (155)

Before asking how students can better write "good" poems, I propose we look beyond the gaze of the sublime reader and ask how students can write useful poems. Only after the potential use of a poem is established within specific cultural institutions of production, distribution, and consumption can poets then judge how to train themselves to write "good" poems that can act with efficacy within particular cultural situations. (159)

The "sublime reader" concept remains a little vague to me, but I think its the "reader" implied by standard workshop criticism and aesthetics. Here's the clearest quote I pulled on the issue:

The workshop needs to address lived situations rather than assuming and perpetuating the presence of a falsely sublime (generally a white, educated, middle-class) reader...Poems are not read by ethereal readers considering craft. The audience in the workshop should be able to anticipate what interpretive speech community is going to receive the poem, in what form. (162)

So we see Green is using "sublime reader" as a way of critiquing standard workshop practice as a sort of "ivory tower" phenomena (He avoids this cliche, but it fits his thesis). And moving beyond the "sublime" reader to real audiences, or "vernacular interpretive communities" is a real sea change for CW praxis. This shift in audience is what justifies his throwing out the idea of "good" poetry and replacing it with a different (but I think more valuable) concept: the "useful" poem. And Green uses the term "usefulness" rather broadly:

Usefulness can make artists uncomfortable, for they can feel constrained to tangible, socially recognized productivity. I wish to examine usefulness, however, beyond the confines of commodity labor...Within the concept of use comes the concept of act or event-someone is using the poem, someplace, to do something for some reason. Poets then go beyond writing a good poem and begin to think about how to use a poem, and how to write a poem they can use...we have to remember to be careful not to limit use to pragmatic utility but extend our consideration to other varieties: use might be pleasure or horror, stimulation or seduction. (165)

You can see he's using "use" so broadly it can include any poetic effect at all, and this could be somewhat problematic. Especially since the general tone of his work implies an actual social utility for the poem beyond entertainment value. I think Green would agree that "use" is broad enough to include entertaining uses, but still carries a suggestion of responsible social engagement. Or something to that effect. In any case, the main value of using "useful" in conjunction with "poetry" is not to define a limited class of poetry, but to focus writers on the social nature of their work.

He also warns against a certain attitude toward "vernacular interpretive communities":

It is tempting to assume that such communities exist as...natural traditions to which we do not belong and about which we talk as outsiders. Rather, communities are fluid and continually in the process of creating their foundations...Neither ought we to limit possible communities in readily available terms of demarcation (ethnicity, race, class, nationality). Undefined communities, which lie outside the language and concepts we currently use, are struggling toward definition and coherence through culture and writing. (169)

Interpretive communities have porous borders, and, while ethnicity and class and etc do define some communities, there are some that are more inclusive. And new communities come into being and pass out of being all the time. I'm not sure what Fish has on this, but it would be interesting to see how he compares.

All in all, there's some good stuff here. A solid expansion of the idea of interpretive communities. I think he may have found a way past Fish without even really bothering to argue with his theory. A much nicer move than the one I made in my paper last semester. And the concept of the "useful poem" is a good one. Very quotable.


Leads:

Green says he's getting his "vernacular interpretive communities" from Jane Thompson, who takes Fish's idea and puts it in terms of the writer, so I'll need to get this:
Tompkins, Jane. P. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.

And I probably need to read the rest of the essays in Fish's book.

This might be a solid cultural studies lead:
Berlin, James A. "Composition Studies and Cultural Studies: Collapsing Boundaries." Rhetoric in an Antifoundational World. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. 389-410.

This is the piece where he rails against theory:
D. W. Fenza. "Creative Writing and Its Discontents." The Associated Writing Programs. 2 Feb 2001. .

This should point to a whole line of research interesting it its own right:
"Inquiring into the Nexus of Compositions Studies and Creative Writing." College Composition and Communication 51.1 (1999): 70-95.

Might be a lead into Cultural Studies, if perhaps a bit dated:
Johnson, Richard. "What Is Cultural Studies Anyway?" Social Text 15 (1986-87): 38-80.

This guy had a great example of a lumberjack poem that was considered technically clumsy by his class until they were told of the poem's community:
Nelson, Cary. "A Theorized Poetry Class." Teaching Contemporary Theory to Undergraduates. Ed. Dianne E Sadoff and William E. Cain. New York: MLA, 1994. 179-91.

He cites this as the "best example" of his type of praxis:
Muller, Lauren, and the Poetry for People Collective, eds. June Jordan s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. New York: Routedge, 1995.

Reaction to Dawson: Privileged discourse

My reflections on the "privileged cultural status afforded" by/to literary language:

1.
With the end of the cold war and the rise of multinational capitalism, the spread of American influence across the globe, English has assumed an increasingly important role in business around the world.

To chose to write in English (even if this is not experienced as a "choice") is to write in the language of global capital and to be in a dialogic relationship with the realities of late stage capitalism.

I'm not sure what more to say on this point. I've more to say on the domestic situation of American English.

2.
Countries that have a history of feudalism often have a rigidly stratified language, with dialects appropriate to each class. In such countries, clear choices are available to the author, each with equally clear political allegiances. In the U.S., where no such history of feudalism is present, there is not the same type of formal stratification. This is not to say that our language is not stratified, only that our stratification is not as rigidly formalized. It is just as real and functions equally to oppress and exclude, but it is not necessarily immediately apparent as a choice to the author, especially if the author is a white middle class male. To all other authors, the stratification of the language stand out more readily. (This, in part, is the nature of what is called "white privilege," the inability of whites to recognize privilege as such.)

The fact that academic discourse is essentially white middle- and upper-class discourse has been fairly well established. The difficulty of acquiring this discourse if one is not born into it has also been established. If we look at findings from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), or similar data (SAT scores for example), we find that "proficiency" in literacy—that is dominant literacy, or white literacy—is disproportionately distributed along lines of race and class. Language is tied to power, and access to dominant discourse is denied to marginalized groups. The situation is really no different linguistically than the situation of post-feudal Russia, from whence Bakhtin arrives at his conclusion, only that the stratification of our discourse wears a face of meritocracy and egalitarianism.

Thus, the privileged author who writes in privileged English (as I am doing now) is often unaware that he/she has made a choice with clear political or ideological allegiances. I am writing and you are reading in the language of the white American patriarchy.

Further, the stats from NAAL show that in 2003 only 13% of the adult population qualified as "proficient" in prose literacy. In order to qualify as proficient in prose literacy, adults have to be able to demonstrate skills such as inferring the purpose of an event described in a magazine article and comparing and contrasting the meaning of two metaphors in a poem. Anyone making their living in the English department will identify these as rather basic skills of literary interpretation, necessary but not yet sufficient for understanding and appreciating works of literature. Further skills are required in order make sense of "high literary" or canonical works, which require the application of our many hermeneutical methods.

Think of the skills involved in making sense of a Pynchon novel. Gravity's Rainbow. Or a Shakespeare play. Or a poem by...well by pretty much anybody taken seriously by academics. These require a skill level well beyond "Prose proficiency," and this skill level is unevenly distributed along lines of race and wealth.

So what does it mean that we encourage our students to write "literary" poetry or drama or fiction? We push them to aspire to a discourse in which less than 13% of Americans will be able to participate. Why? Because this is "great" literature? Great for who? Literature for who?

To be fair, this argument fails to draw a distinction between language and power. Between the "beauty" of language and its "unfortunate" involvement in a politics of oppression. A rebuttal could be made that it is not the poet's fault that English is the language of global capitalism or that literacy in dominant English is unevenly distributed along lines of race and class. And this is true. It is not the poet's fault, but is the poet's circumstance, and poets ought not write in ignorance of the ideological and political realities attached to their medium.

Knowledge of these realities must precede any investigation of notions of audience. The question "Who are you writing for?" cannot be answered by an American author apart from an honest appraisal of the political situation of American English.

Dawson: Chapter 6 and Conclusion

I'm skipping Ch 6. Skimmed and didn't find much to catch my interest. If my question was "What is our end goal for our students?" then this would be an important chapter to dig through. Not my question.

Anyway, he gives the most concise definition of his term "literary intellectual" in the Conclusion. For Dawson literary intellectuals are "writers who are critically aware of how literature circulates in social power relations, and who accept responsibility for their own work" (205).

He adds:

Since intellectuals within the post-Theory academy are concerned not only with the refinement of disciplinary knowledge, but with the deployment of this knowledge within public debate, students and teachers of Creative Writing who perform intellectual work as writers are positioned to contribute to the New Humanities by virtue of the fact that their work is geared towards an audience in the public sphere. (205)

The pedagogical reform Dawson calls for is related to this idea of the creative writer as an agent of social transformation, or at least as an active and aware participant in the political situation of his/her work. His revision of workshop strategy includes interventions that highlight the social and political nature of creative work.

If each student manuscript is not only afforded a remedial technical overhauling in the workshop, but is placed within a broader cultural or political context by the critical expertise of the teacher, then student writers will be given a greater understanding of how their creative work might relate to their essays in other classes, and how they might consider placing themselves as writers in society, as intellectuals who can potentially contribute to public debate via the medium of literature, rather than merely seeing potential publication as affirmation of their 'talent'. (208)

He recommends encouraging students to read work from countries where political repression and social unrest force authors into awareness of their responsibilities to the public sphere. He also recommends having students engage with critiques of the whole category of literature from a Cultural Studies perspective, although he offers no leads in that direction. Unfortunate, since I am not familiar with those critiques and could use a lead or two to help me along.

Dawson suggests a pedagogy that negotiates a balance between formalism and political engagement. This balance:

requires shifting the pedagogical focus of the workshop from narrowly formalist conceptions of craft to the social context of literature, but without diminishing the importance of craft as an intellectual skill, and without detracting from the purpose of improving students' writing. This means paying attention to the content of a literary work, as this is what connects it to the outside world, but without isolating content from form. What is required, then, is to demonstrate how content is realised in the formal construction of a text, and this means shifting from a formalist poetics to a sociological poetics. (208)

To this end he briefly employs Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and then offers a reading of a book of poems related to animal rights. Bakhtin's work is strong, the reading of these poems, less so, if only because the political features and social content of the poetry is so much on the surface that it provides no depth understanding of how all creative work employs language that is, by nature, politically loaded.

A few quotes worth pulling from his summary and use of Bakhtin:

The author is not a craftsman who employs an ideologically neutral and formalistically pure language to express a unified personal vision or to master the objective world. Instead, writers represent within the literary world a range of extra-literary languages which organise social relations. (209)

Adapting this insight [he's referring to heteroglossia] tothe critical practice of the workshp would mean considering how these 'voices' are transformed by their inclusion and manipulation within a text. It would mean tracing the dialogic connections being made between the text and the extra-literary discourses it mobilises, and thus studying how authorial voice // is positioned in relation to other social voices...A sociological poetics would thus require a recognition that aesthetic or craft-based decision of a writer are always the result (consciously or otherwise) of ideological or political choice: the choice to employ social languages and the ideologies they embody in certain ways, and hence the choice to position a literary work in relation to these languages, as an active intervention in the ideological work they perform. (210-211)

The author is always engaged in a dialogue with the belief systems or ideologemes which stratify a national language and give meaning to words by employing them in concrete social utterances. As a result, the work of literature is itself a concrete utterance within those discourses, existing on the same discursive plane as a contribution to their verbal-ideological life. An oppositional criticism within the workshop would draw attention to the ways in which the privileged cultural status afforded to literature regulates the nature of this dialogic exchange. (214)

There is a lot to reflect on here, and I think I may save my thoughts for another post. I find Dawson's pedagogical leanings inspiring, and I'm pretty sure I could make a decent paper out of expanding his comment on the "privileged cultural status" of literature and, I would add, "literary" language.

Leads:

Bakhtin, of course.

Oh, and Cultural Studies perspectives on literature. Although, I'm guessing a good Marxist would do instead. Terry Eagleton, then. Marxism and Literary Critism (1976). Or maybe his Intro to Theory. And Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism would be a good fit. Not sure these are what he means by "Cultural Studies" though. I'm thinking not, and will need to track something down more along the lines of what he's talking about.

Dawson: Chapter 5

So here's where Dawson gets down to theory. He asserts that "Creative Writing needs to answer to the critique of authorship and of the category of literature offered by Theory, rather than simply rejecting this critique as unhelpful or deleterious to literary culture" (161). Then he breaks down CW's responses into three types: integration, avant-garde, and political.

Not much to show for the first type. "Integration" refers to any attempt to integrate Theory and CW. There's a nice comment on the effort to critique poststructuralist theory through CW practice. He says that the "domain of inquiry" of poststructuralist theory "is linguistic and textual meaning, not the creative process. So attempts to illuminate or interrogate it through the practice of writing seem to be beside the point" (162).

He cites a source that gives a rather bad response to Barthes: "It leads Miles to claim that Barthes's theory of the author entering his own death at the moment of writing enables students to understand how writers assume a narrative persona or enter the voice of their characters" (163), which seems to miss the point of Barthes entirely. Might be worth looking up when treating Barthes, although Dawson also cautions that "many writers see the death of the author as the apotheosis and end point of Theory" (164), so too central an examination of Barthes would be a party foul.

Dawson's "avant-garde" response to Theory is essentially a treatment of Australian fictocriticism. Not really my thing, so I'll not comment.

The Political model offers more interesting material, mostly for his citations of Said and Chris Green. He cites Said as critiquing Deconstruction literary analysis as the "new New Criticism," and Green offers a vision of the writing workshop as socially engaged. Cites also the Amato and Fleisher article that you can get to through the "ebr on cw" link at top right.

He summarizes the political approach like so:

...a desire to demystify cliches of literary creativity and reform the writing workshop as a site of political contestation. The focus is not on formal experimentation but on the pragmatics of production and reception within the framework of Cultural Studies. (172)

He cites Marcell Freiman (2001) as someone who feels that Eliot's Modernist view of the relation between creativity and criticism still has some merit. Cites David Galef (2000) on the relationship between CW workshops and identity politics.

Dawson promises his own investigation of politics and the workshop in his conclusion.

He only gets to his own approach to CW and Theory after his survey. He opens this by distinguishing CW from other disciplines by stating that there is "no coherent body of knowledge to pass on" (178), which somehow doesn't sit right with me.

He proceeds:

One way to conceive of Creative Writing as a discipline is to understand that it produces knowledge by an interaction between formalist criticism and practical craft. This is because a practical device of literary composition, such as a point of view or narrative voice (a technical choice made by the writer as to who sees and who speaks in the work), is also a critical tool of analysis (a formalist category for the classification and study of literary works)...If poetics, in Todorov's formulation, negotiates the boundary between literary structure and individual work, or between science and interpretation, then the same negotiation occurs in literature itself. A specific work of literature not only reveals the structure or general laws of literature, but interrogates and expands them. It is a contribution not just to the practical creative art of writing, but to the study of literature as well. (178)

Knowledge [in Literary Studies] is constituted by the interaction of literature and criticism...a dialogic process, a ceaseless interaction between permeable modes of writing. (178)

English is a dialogic engagement between literature and criticism, not in a hierarchical sense of...first-order artistic practice and second-order intellectual apprehension, but in the sense of an ongoing series of interactions between complementary modes of writing. In this case Creative Writing is not necessarily the teaching of writing literature alongside the teaching of writing criticism, but a mode of literary research within the academy. (179)

So he's relying heavily on formalism here, for understandable reasons. And I'd say his treatment of the relationship between formalism and practice is the best I've come across so far. Intuitive and to-the-point. Then he progresses to a defense of the discipline, which I sort of think stretches the point a bit. Not that its not nice to think of poems and novels as "research" equal to that of scholarly work...I guess...Not sure what to make of that, actually.

All in all, the chapter was much less than I'd hoped it would be. Not a thoroughgoing engagement with Theory. Just a "survey" of his three models and then a bit of a formalist hurrah.

Leads:

This is the one I'm most excited about:
Green, Chris (2001). 'Materializing the Sublime Reader: Cultural Studies, Reader Response, and Community Service in the Creative Workshop', College English 64.2: 153-74.

And this is worth looking up:
Said, Edward (1983). The World, the Text, and the Critic, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Page 159.

And I suppose I may have to deal with this at some point:
Miles, Robert (1992). 'Creative Writing, Contemporary Theory and the English Curriculum', in Moria Monteith and Robert Miles (eds) Teaching Creative Writing: Theory and Practice, Buckingham: Open University Press, 34-44.

I can't tell if the identity politics guy is worth hunting down or not.

Dawson: Chapter 3 and 4

In this chapter, "Workshop Poetics," Dawson puts into practice the theoretical analysis of workshop practices that he promised in his intro. I'd say the results are mixed. He repeats his "mini-histories" approach from the last chapter, this time giving the background of three guiding principles of most Creative Writing workshops: "Reading as a writer," "Show, don't tell," and "Discovering a voice."

Here's his orientation for the chapter:

In asking if there is a poetics of creative writing, I mean a general theory of literature (fiction, poetry, drama)--but literature as creative writing, that is, as a process rather than product, something which has been written rather than something which is to be read; and a general theory of literature which enables the analysis of specific texts, in particular, the student manuscript. (90)

I'm not sure if he can really make a distinction between something that "has been written" and something else that "is to be read." Likewise, splitting process and product is a bit problematic, but the general orientation is sound, I think. He wants to ask what literature is for writers, and he wants to ask this in a way that helps us all to analyse student work. Fair enough.

In his section on "reading as a writer," he defines this phrase as "reading with the aim of discovering ways to improve one's own writing" (91). Apparently, reading like a writer goes back further than the source I cited as a lead in my last post. Dorthea Brande's book Becoming a Writer (1934) was the first to use the term.

Dawson starts with Walter Besant and works forward in large strides. He arrives at Moxley's collection Creative Writing in America and notes that most of the entries are occupied by this notion of teaching student writers a particular method of reading.

A few quotes worth pulling:

We have seen here an attempt to distinguish Creative Writing from Literary Studies by virtue not of the work students produce, but of the manner in which they read literature. It is a difficult distinction, however, based on a difference of motivation (to learn how to write rather than how to appreciate literature), and presumably of expertise (the writer drawing upon his or her first-hand experience of the craft rather than a training in literary study)" (95).

It is obvious that the terminology employed in the writing workshop, such as plot, structure, point of view, dialogue and character, is formalist in orientation. And it is also obvious that this sort of reading of literature wishes to concentrate on the craft of writing: how a work of literature is made, rather than extra-literary concerns. The claim, however, that 'reading as a writer' is somehow not criticism, based on a writer's point of view than a critic's, cannot be validated. (96)

So the distinction between literary studies and CW, between the author and the critic, is tenuous at best. Authors do criticism, and CW students are very much students learning to appreciate literature even as they learn to "make" it.

Dawson's work on "show, don't tell" is more or less a rehashing of Wayne Booth's work on the same topic in his Rhetoric of Fiction. So I'm skipping. Better to quote from the Booth.

In the "discovering a voice" section, Dawson brings Morton and Zavarzadeh back in as "the most damning critique of Creative Writing from the perspective of postmodern theory" (108), which is a pretty clear sign that I need to find that one and read it.

There is a sort of "surprise" section on Authorship that has a bunch of good stuff in it. It strikes me that Authorship is a central concern for Creative Writing Theory--defending the author against claims that would undermine his/her power, finding ways to understand the reach and limits of authorial power in such a way that enables authors to base their efforts on reasonable assumptions about what effects they might hope to achieve--these are important projects.

Dawson says this:

Authorship exists in the workshop as an implicit assumption, in the sense that an exemplary text is attributed to an agent who has consciously employed techniques of writing. 'Reading as a writer' operates by approaching the text as a series of artistic choices made by the author...And while these techniques are implicitly attributed to a conscious organising agent, that agent is only the anonymous embodiment of the compositional techniques themselves (115)

So students to not attempt to read into the psychology or biography of the author, but are simply interested in the author as a set of artistic choices among available techniques and their application.

The writer is the origin of the piece, the owner and the one responsible for its development towards an exemplary standard. The writer may be consulted for clarification and subsequently put forward motivation, an intent, which was not apprehended or indeed was misinterpreted by readers. (115)

The intent referred to in a workshop is not the end-goal of the critical work done on a piece. Rather, it provides an aid to the work of remediation or of improving the piece.

The object of analysis for intellectual work performed on student manuscripts is not the reconstruction of the writer's intention; there is no desire to latch on to a single wordless meaning and enable its expression (115)

This is not to say that students do not perceive themselves as creative beings using writing as a medium for their ideas. The student manuscript is undoubtedly an authored work but it is not critically apprehended or evaluated within the discipline according to a paradigm of authorial criticism derived from Romanticism. Furthermore, the reading practices which enable Creative Writing to operate as a discipline are not reifications of the writer's consciousness. They are derived from formalist literary criticism. (115-116)

So CW workshops assume an "intent" in student work, but are only interested in that intent in as much as it expresses itself in formal, or technical, choices made in the process of writing the draft, choices which may have resulted in a poor communication of that technical intent and which therefore require revision.

It strikes me that the whole project would be impossible without the assumption and investigation of the student author's intent. How else would one suggest revisions? Based on what? Without appealing to the author and asking "What did you hope to accomplish here? Why did you choose this form and apply it in this way?" we are left to apply our own arbitrary standards of taste or "good writing" which could only result in a sort of aesthetic tyranny. Not to mention a stifling of the very creativity the discipline is meant to nurture if not teach. And eventually a blandness and sameness to student work.

I am going to have to read up on the New Critical "intentional fallacy" and see how this compares to the type of formalist intent Dawson finds at work in the workshop.

Dawson's conclusions for the chapter:

The poetics of Creative Writing, then, consists of a critical study of exemplary texts which is no different from...formalist criticism.... The end of this study is not so much a critical evaluation of these texts...nor a structuralist account of the linguistic codes which underlie all narrative, nor even a stockpiling of narrative methods and devices which may be of use to the writer, but the development of a method of 'reading as a writer.' This same method of criticism is then deployed in the analysis of student manuscripts, of works in progress, with the intention not of passing final evaluative judgement, but of aiding its progress to a completed form, and with the secondary intention of encouraging the aspiring writer to internalise this form of criticism as a method of revision and editing and an integral part of the 'creative' process. (120)

Reading is the deal. Makes sense in light of somethings I've read by David Lodge and others. Criticism is an essential part of the creative process, and it is this aspect of Creative Writing that we can actually teach. Although, I'm not totally opposed to the "stockpiling" of techniques. You have to know what's been done and how its been done in order to find new ways to play with whatever genre you're working in. Still, reading is it. At least according to Dawson. The student writer learns to 'read as a writer' and thereby internalizes the critic as a part of his/her creative process.

And all this time, I've been told to "silence the internal critic." Dawson is suggesting that the whole point is to strengthen, inform, and give voice to the internal critic. It's this critic that is doing all the work.

Leads:

T.S. Eliot enters the discussion once again. His essays "The Frontiers of Criticism" and "The Function of Criticism" (and there may be a few others) look like they may be required reading for me this semester.

A nice quote from Paul Engle (1964):

Criticism is not simply a fiendish attack on a book, but a constant part of the writer's job, beginning with his rejection of one concept in favour of another, one image, one phrase, rather than others.

More or less supports Eliot's theses, I believe.

Chapter 4: I skimmed it and am passing. It's a history of Creative Writing in Australia, which is interesting, but not so germane. They get a late start down under, and wind up with the workshop model just like everyone else. They're a bit more interdisciplinary. Clearly separated from the English Studies folks.

The real meat of the book, I hope, is up next: Chapter 5. "Negotiating Theory"

Dawson: Chatpers 1 and 2

I'm skipping some material here, since it's not so relevant to my current project. For future reference, however, Dawson's first chapter offers an interesting examination of the transition from "imagination" to "creativity" in the 17th century. Lots of good leads here for research on creativity. I'll repeat his quoting of Hobbes's Leviathan here, since it stood out to me. Hobbes identifies two forms of imagination:

simple Imagination; as when one imagineth a man, or horse, which he hath seen before. The other is Compound; as when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a Centaure (Dawson 23)

Dawson tells us Hobbes thought Compound imagination was the type for poetic invention, and I have to agree. It seems to me that this is precisely where "ideas come from." But I don't really want to run down that rabbit trail just now. Have to revisit all this another time.

His second chapter covers "Disciplinary Origins" which is not quite a full history, but more a set of small histories of "various elements of contemporary Creative Writing theory and pedagogy in their original institutional contexts" (50). He looks at "creative self-expression" as a Romantic notion; "literacy" and the origins of English Composition; "craft" and the proliferation of creative writing handbooks; "literature from the inside," which relates New Criticism and early writing workshops, and finally "Emergence of the workshop." Again, a bit afield of what I'm aiming for, which is an in-depth treatment of theory and CW, although there are a few things in his treatment of "literature from the inside" which might be useful in thinking about New Criticism and CW.

Pgs 75-76 lead me to believe that the relationship between New Criticism and Creative Writing is closer than I thought. They came into being at approximately the same time, and Dawson feels that NC is the sin qua non of CW as it exists today:

the workshop developed and became the dominant mode of teaching writing because of the influence of the New Criticism. Creative Writing became an institutional site for the literary authority of writers, the close scrutiny of individual student manuscripts relied upon practical criticism (76)

Dawson also points out that the major figures of New Criticism were poets first. So how antagonistic to CW could NC really be? I think I need to read up on NC a bit more to get what's going on here.

Leads:

An article by Norman Foester offer his understanding of Creative Writing as an aid to criticism:
(1936) 'Literary Scholarship and Criticism', English Journal coll. edn 25: 224-32.

An article by Allen Tate begins the whole "reading as a writer" deal:
"'We read as writers': The Creative Arts Program and How it is Helpign Freshman Would-Be Authors', Princeton Alumni Weekly 40: 505-6.

I've got some stuff on the New Critics, and will have to delve into it. He mentioned some "heresies" that I hadn't heard of before. "Didactic heresy" and "Heresy of the Paraphrase"... I'll be reading some of this stuff this semester, I expect.

Also, he makes it look like D.G. Myer's book ("The Elephants Teach") is an important source for understanding the connection between New Criticism and CW.


Going forward:

If the relationship between New Criticism and Creative Writing isn't one of the latter lazily appropriating the former without critical reflection but rather is one of the latter requiring the former to take its present shape, then this may not be the way I want to go in my research this semester....still processing this...

Dawson: Intro

Dawson states his orientation as follows:

Creative Writing functions as a discursive site for continuing debate over some of the foundational questions of literary studies: what is literature, what is the nature of the creative process, and what is the nature between the creative and the critical? It is possible, then, to see the pedagogical strategies which underpin writing workshops themselves as responses to these foundational questions. As a result I intend to approach Creative Writing not as a practice (creativity), or as a synonym for literature, but as a discipline: a body of knowledge and a set of techniques for imparting knowledge. (2)

I like his list of questions, as they are the ones I'm interested in, too. He nicely frames the relationship between pedagogy and theory in a way that allows him to read classroom practice as enactments of and/or responses to theory. I'm not sure what to make of the idea of CW as a "body of knowledge." Makes sense in terms of its location in academia, but maybe too limiting...

Dawson says he aims to place CW within a "history of crisis" in English studies:

Creative Writing first developed disciplinary identity in American universities alongside the New Criticism, in mutual opposition to scholarship in English Studies. Writing programmes expanded at the same time as the rise of Theory but became entrenched in opposition to it as a means of retaining this disciplinary identity. This is because Theory called into question the privileged category of literature, the raison d'etre of Creative Writing. (6)

I think there are a few lines worth investigating here, and I wonder how much theoretical work Dawson will be able to do over the course of his book. First, New Criticism is often adopted by folks in CW as the foundation of the workshop and its method of critiquing student work, but this stance is apparently adopted in spite of the "fallacies" of New Criticism, the "Affective" and "Intentional" fallacies actually work against the project of CW, at least as I see it. CW teaches writers to write intentionally and in order to affect readers, right? So if the discipline is to adopt New Critical methods, it must do so carefully, justifying what it is appropriating and its choices about what to leave behind.
Second, there's a boatload of work to do in defending CW against or within Theory. Dawson puts his finger right on the sore here: CW has, by and large, not adapted to the age of Theory. Even calling ours a "post-Theory" age is not sufficient grounds for dismissing the theoretical work of the last several decades, as Dawson explains that "post-Theory" simply means we've entered a phase of incorporating the challenges of Theory into our teaching practices. I'd like to see what I can do to address CW in terms of Theory, and I'll be interested to see how much ground Dawson gains on this issue.

Three questions Dawson wants to ask (very helpful):

(1) instead of asking whether writers need formal training or whether teaching the craft is helpful for writers, and instead of producing more handbooks on the craft of writing, we must ask what are the theoretical underpinnings of the practical writing workshop, what are the assumptions about literature which allow writing instruction to take place; (2) instead of questioning the academic rigour of the writing workshop, we must ask what constitutes knowledge in Creative Writing, and how does work produced by teachers and students in Creative Writing (i.e. their 'research') contributed to knowledge in Literary Studies—and this also means asking what is the function of literature in modern Literary Studies; (3) instead of bemoaning a split between writers and critics we must ask what position of literary authority can a writer assume in the academy, not as an artistic practitioner, but as an intellectual? (6)

'Nuff said. I'll save comment for his answers to these.

The remainder of the intro is taken up by three sections: "Can writing be taught?" "Should writing be taught?" and "The garret and the ivory tower."

The first two questions are common enough in the discourse about CW pedagogy, although I find them rather dull and purposeless. CW is taught, and taught widely, a fact which seems to me to make these questions moot. We should wash our hands of these questions and move on to how to teach CW. Except for one thing. CW is often taught as if it cannot be taught, and so the question of "if" is unfortunately enmeshed with the question of "how." Dawson comments thusly:

The irony of the debate over whether writing can be taught, which was triggered by the rise of Creative Writing, is that most writing courses themselves tend to operate with the notion of innate talent, claiming only that talent can be nurtured in a sympathetic environment: a community of writers where the practical skills of literary craft can be taught, and where students become better readers of literature and better critics of their own work. In fact, it is common for classes in Creative Writing to regulate enrollment numbers by requiring the submission of a folio which displays creative potential. (11)

WTF, right? This seems especially odd to me in light of the fact that Composition Theory has progressed swimmingly past these questions and has established itself within academia to such an extent that you will not find in the pages of CCC or College English anyone wondering about—or even dreaming they should bother defending the discipline against—the question of whether writing can be taught. CW suffers under a burden of excessive, specious privilege. Fiction and poetry must be placed in a special class, apart from the essay, if their instruction is to require its own justification. I say, if writing can be taught, writing can be taught; what do genres matter? But this excessive, specious privilege has a long history, is tied to notions of genius that have held claim on us for thousands of years. So bucking the trend may take some work. I'm personally disposed just to ignore the questions and move on. I think this movement might actually prove to be the better answer. Anyway...

The final section is taken up with the metaphors of the garret and the tower and their relationship to one another. Not much here that catches my interest, so I'll not comment any further.



Leads:

He cites Donald Morton and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh (1988) as a source that critiques CW workshops as failing to respond to the challenge of Theory.

Dawson: Citation

Dawson, Paul. Creative Writing and the New Humanities. London: Routledge, 2005. Print.