Creative Writing Studies, Authorship, and the Ghosts of Romanticism

Abstract

The paper examines creative writing studies’ accounts of authorship in light of developments in print culture studies over the past decade. Creative writing studies provides an analysis of the tasks and procedures of the creative writer, at least, the writer within the creative writing program. The figure of the author within creative writing studies is, mostly, constrained to accounts of the writer–researcher within the university. By way of contrast, print culture studies examines authorship and the figure of the author in their wider institutional, economic, and cultural contexts, mostly beyond the university. This paper advocates augmenting current approaches to creative writing studies with a concern: (1) to develop itself as an expert discipline on creative writing processes more broadly than creative writing as undertaken within the university; and (2) to examine more fully authorship and the figure of the author outside the university.

Keywords:

• creative writing studies
• authorship
• romanticism
• print culture studies