Cognitive poetics and creative practice: beginning the conversation

ABSTRACT

This article sits on the critical-creative boundary and draws upon aspects of the field of cognitive poetics – the principled study of what happens in the mind as readers read – to explore how an understanding of these processes might benefit the creative writer. The paper is pioneering in that it considers the implications of cognitive poetic approaches for the ‘mechanics’ of prose fiction explicitly in terms of creative practice rather than from the perspective of the stylistician or literary critic. It is in providing a principled and rigorous account of the way readers read that cognitive poetics has much to offer the writer. Indeed, the article will argue that writing and reading, rather than being separate activities, should be seen as interrelated positions along a cline.

KEYWORDS:

• Narratology
• creative writing
• cognitive poetics
• empathy
• theory as practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jeremy Scott writes, teaches and researches on the border between literature and language studies at the University of Kent. As well as his own fiction, he has published on contemporary British and Irish fiction, literary stylistics (especially in relation to creative practice), narratology and travel literature.

Notes

1 See also Boulter (2007).

2 And yet: it is of course possible to envisage creative writing that draws its efficacy from a sense of dis-engagement and alienation.