Three useful articles here. Fraser for the value of post-structural theory. McLoughlin for a framing of the project. Hardy for a negative example of the application of the intentional fallacy to the workshop.
Fraser, Gregory. "A Translator's Tale."
Fraser considers himself a translator in the sense that he devotes himself "'translating' the discourses of critical theory into the art and discipline of Creative Writing" (152). Fraser is especially interested in translating post-structural and postmodern theory into CW practice. The primary value of this theory to CW students, according to Fraser, is that is saves them from "parochialism" and/or "provincial attitudes." Understanding sophisticated theory allows authors to write sophisticated creative work.
The value of understanding Foucault's work is that it leads to closer examinations of power relations:
Without a fine-tuned awareness of 'minute and everyday' expressions of power, as well as of larger authoritarian forces in culture (not to mention the continual commingling of the two), Creative Writing students may open their work to criticism of parochialism...[S]killful authorship demands a keen perception of authority in its innumerable forms—in big business and government, to local-level yet no-less-complex exchanges between parents and kids, to 'everyday' (and often seemingly power-neutral) interactions with friends, lovers, and perfect strangers...It is frequently this vision of power that leads students to subtler works of fiction, drama, and poetry. It helps them avoid the narrow view that simply ignores the play of power, and the similarly limited vision that believes power to be located solely in institutions divorced, form, and standing above, the 'everyday'. (157)Postmodern notions of the de-centering of discourse and the subject help "emerging writers de-essentialize their characters and destabilize formulaic plots" (160).
Lacan for characters:
I find that the Lacanian notion of deferred desire can help students create characters whose motivations are less predictable, more open to surprise. (160)And Lacan for poetry:
Lacanian theories about selfhood have a special force, as well, for student poets. At the onset, many students who wish to write poems proceed from myths of wholeness about the self Students often write poems to voice what they take to be the essence of an inner being. They seek // to capture some final, genuine truth about an allegedly unique emotion or experience. And these underlying assumptions often produce texts that reach for effect...Lacanian theory can help students recognize not so much the fragmentation of an ultimately unified albeit imperiled self (a modernist conception), but the cultural/linguistic manufacture of the very idea of selfhood (a more postmodern assertion). Such a perspective gives students a different kind of freedom to adopt masks and to explore self-contradictions as generative rather than logically fallacious. Lacan can't help students completely shed the dominant fictions of culture (none of us can do that), but his thinking can encourage students to recognize and tamper with these assumptions in unexpected, artistically vitalizing ways. (160-1)And Lacan for the creative process:
Students may in fact become more willing, after a little training in Lacanian theory, to let language (rather than a sense of stable selfhood) guide the poetic process. They may allow language to suggest unstable constructions of selfhood, flickers of desire, suggestions of unconscious strings of motivation. This can lead to stronger poems. (161)Derrida has some value, too:
Derrida's thought can 'free' them [students] from the 'tyranny of the central idea.' Such freedom frequently leads to greater flexibility in characterization, plot development, and language use. By not beginning with a main theme or idea, students avoid working predictably down the page. (162)I'm not as convinced by this argument. I've yet to see a constructive application of Deconstruction that works. And how could such a thing work? Derrida's thought is liberating for some, since it allows for the undoing of established categories, etc... But I'm not sold on the idea that reading "Structure, Sign, and Play" will allow students to write less predictably, or that whatever they'll come up with instead will be preferable.
McLoughlin, Nigel. "Creating an Integrated Model for Teaching Creative Writing: One Approach."
McLoughlin speaks of "writerly criticism":
At the center I write. Everything stems from that. If I didn't write, I would not be interested in writerly criticism, because to write means one must also criticise in a writerly fashion. Writerly criticism is // different from literary criticism. There is a difference of viewpoint. Literary criticism is concerned largely from the reader's viewpoint. What impact the text has on the reader, how different readers may read a text. While writerly criticism is concerned with that also, it is only part of the story, it is only ever a means to an end. A writer will examine a text critically in order to look closely at the effects it might have on the reader, and at different ways the text may be read, but the motivation is different. The writer may want to add an ambiguity or remove one; a writer may wish to engender a specific effect or set of effects on the reader. Either way, writerly critics are concerned with making the text 'better'. They tend to start from the premise that, this would work better if... (88-89, his ellipsis)McLoughlin feels that teaching creative writing is, to some extent, teaching students the art and practice of writerly criticism. It allows them to practice such criticism on their own texts. However, he does not feel that they are best taught by workshoping their own texts:
It quickly became apparent that exemplars of good and bad writing worked much better as a way of demonstrating, in practical terms, particularly fine writing or cliche and redundancy etc. in a less emotionally charged atmosphere. It enabled students to criticise and edit the writing of others and by extension their own writing, through using worked examples from other writers that pointed out certain features that students could recognise in their own work or try and adapt to their own uses. (89)Here's how to pass writerly criticism on to students:
Teaching students to be critical requires balance between bringing out ideas they may have about how a text is working (or not working) and whether the text is good of its type. That // means also teaching them that just because they don't 'like' a text, it does not mean that it is not working, or that there is nothing they can learn from it as a writer. In order to teach this, as great a variety of texts as possible are introduced and the students are asked to interrogate the text from several viewpoints: Does the text work? How does it work? Could it be improved and if so how? What are the constituencies out of which the text is written? What can the student learn from the text as writer?Later, he expands slightly on these last questions:
How does the author achieve his/her effects? What tropes do they use? What can I learn from these texts as a writer? (92)The rest of his essay is taken up with the elements that must be taught and the sequence in which they are best taught. It's a good essay and a fine prescription for CW. Strikes me that this along with Shelnutt's article would make for a healthy class discussion, since she provides the best critique yet of CW status quo, and he provides an solid alternative model.
LEAD:
He cites Kolb's model of the writing cycle from Jarvis, P. (2004) *Adult Education & Lifelong Learning: Theory and Practice*. London: Routledge Falmer.
Hardy, Nat. "Gonzo-Formalism: A Creative Writing Meta-Pedagogy for Non-Traditional Students"
I was hoping for more from this guy, but (as far as I could tell) he was promoting the traditional workshop in grandiose terms.
Most importantly to me, he exposes his unexamined assumption that the author of a text should be silent while the class critiques his/her work:
On a symbolic level, the workshop...embodies the 'death of the author' notion, because the monological author must restrain any response to criticism until the critical mass has concluded its interpretive, or poly- // phonic, review. For any author, donning the scold's bridle for the duration of workshop dialect is the most difficult, nay emasculating, part of workshop. Verbal castration sounds excruciating, and, for the silenced writer, it is as if he or she must quietly endure a discriminating panel of critics who cast literary judgments on the author's work...Once critical discussion of the creative work has concluded, the author can address his or her live audience to clarify ambiguities, ask questions or, in some cases, beg forgiveness. (103-104)First of all, it's not possible to comment on this without first addressing Hardy's sexism. How can "any author" feel that something is "emasculating"? Has he ever felt de-feminated? Or, better yet, how can "he or she" endure "verbal castration?" Do his female students have their balls cut off by words? Or is that that all words have testes, and the workshop removes these, neutering each author's language?
In any case, this strikes me as really bad practice and leads to much wasted class time. Gonzo-formalist wasted class time, I guess. Authors are left on their own to measure the distance between intention and effect, rather than the whole class working intentionally and conscientiously on this project together. I guess "Gonzo" is his justification for all the weird, wasteful turns that class discussion can take when it is not directed toward productive criticism of the text. Radical.
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