This article discusses ideas about creativity in the context of a recent work by Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy. It follows Pope in theorising a view of creativity that sees it as re-creation and demonstrates the extent to which the context in which Smith's novel is produced, as well as the acknowledged sources underlying it, helps to shape it as text. In examining the relationship between Smith's source texts and the target text she produces, it seeks to point to her creative capacity in re-imagining and re-working an ancient myth in a contemporary context. It focuses, in particular, on her embedded critique of the debasement and commercial packaging of language in marketing and advertising contexts and of a worldview that would see everything, including the imagination, as a commodity capable of being bottled and sold.
Writing is not entirely contained in the envelope of experience, native thought, and personal motivation to communicate. (Bazerman) Introduction and Review of the Literature The issue of the role and potential benefits of reading in relation to the production of (creative) writing is not new and can be traced back to the disciplinary origins of Creative Writing in the United States. As Dawson (2005) points out, the idea of reading from the inside, that is, ''the practice of writing as a means of developing literary appreciation and critical skills'' (Dawson, 2005: 71) was already a feature of the New Humanism of the 1940s. What is, perhaps, new today is the question of how and what to read and whether this should be approached from an arguably narrow disciplinary base with a focus on technique or whether the matter and material of the reading-writing dynamic should be more broadly conceived and interpreted. As McCaw (2011: 28) indicates, ''the benefits of reading for writers depends (sic) on precisely what sort of reading we are actually talking about''. In an article that is critical of a narrowly construed view of close reading within a closed disciplinary frame, McCaw (2011: 28) goes on to argue that it is necessary to bridge: the gap between functional interpretation and the more expansive forms of textual interpretation that are likely to further students' understanding and appreciation of how writing works and what being a writer means within the context of a wider culture.This call for a re-consideration of the modes and purposes of reading in relation to the development of a Creative Writing curriculum which encourages critical thinking as well as creative evaluation, combining knowledge/s with know-how, is already implicit in Harper's (2010) treatment of the relationship between Creative Writing and reading outlined in his recent book, On Creative Writing, where he explicitly asks:What kinds, what modes of reading and, most importantly, what reading needs to inform that consideration (Harper, 2010: 25)?
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.