Berry, R.M. Theory, Creative Writing, and the Impertinence of History. Colors of a Different Horse.

This chapter is completely fascinating to me -- it shows how the theory and pedagogy of creative writing came about, and good reasons as to why it might have split from other "English"-based studies in academia. So I'll be quoting a lot:

First, some information about the popularity of creative writing programs: "One could persuasively argue that in America the most influential theory of literataure since World War II has been Creative Writing. John Barth has estimated that by 1984 Creataive Writing programs had turned out over 75,000 literary practitioners (Churchman 42), and Liam Rector, former director of Associated Writing Programs, estimated in 1990 that around 3,000 poets and fiction writers were graduating from Creative programs each year. (For comparison, doctoral programs in English average around 800 graduates yearly (Huber 121-2). Although doctoral programs are the principal locus for the formal study of literary theory, the institutional home of Creative Writing is in far more numerous colleges and universities not awarding English Ph.D.'s -- places wehre courses in theory are rare. At present, four-fifths of all American undergraduate English programs offer courses in Creative Writing, almost half offer specializations in Creative Writing, and nearly two-thirds of all Creative Writing programs are located in English departments where no doctoral courses are available (Huber 139, 141, 173) ...

"...Part of what makes this situation interesting is the likelihood that Creative Writing programs exert a more direct influence than any other part of the American academy on the nonacademic production, distribution, and consumption of literature. Most concretely, this influence makes itself felt on the public audiences for the writers' festivals, summer workshops, and readings sponsored by Creative Writing programs or faculty" (57).

This shows that even though formal creative writing programs might be relatively new to academia as compared to literature and composition studies, the boom in interest and exposure has been tremendous. I wonder if this causes some sort of schism between the faculty members who teach it.

More history: "That Creative Writing is a theory of literature seems less peculiar when Creative Writing is compared to the literary apprenticeship it replaced. Prior to the nineteenth century the most widespread European model of the poet's education tended to de-emphasize individual creativity and to foreground the deliberate imitation of other poets (Russell 1-16; Greene, McKeon 168-171; Kennedy 116-19; Sullivan, Michael 279-82). According to this pedagogy, the apprentice poet learned to replicate an adapt various models under the supervision of someone who had established his (the gender seems historically appropriate) reputation as a master ... Contrary to modern expectations, what the Greek or Roman apprentice gleaned from models was not technique only, but plots, themes, scenes, vocabulary, and even the topics of characters' speeches, as though becoming a good poet involved both learning a skill and acquiring a repertory of stories or lore. In this regard, literate poets in late antiquity probably remained close to the practice of earlier oral poets whose training involved learing the 'epic formula' (conventional image clusters, similes, line endings, rhyme schemes, etc.) as well as the ancient stories themselves ...

"...Horace recommended adaptations over original subjects but against against word-for-word translation (Poetics 11. 12-35), Demetrius distringiushed Herodotus' flat quotation of poets from Thucydides' skillful integration of the poets' phrases into his own discourse (paragraphs 112-13), and Dante regarded his own imitation of Virgil (and Virgil's imitation of Homer) as signifying, not inferiority, but the resotration of poetry to its rightful greatness.

"The best known Renaissance version of this mimetic pedagogy is explicated in The Courtier, where imitation, beginning with the learning of principles and correct execution, culminates in the student's attempt to go beyond resemblance and 'transform himself into his master' (Castiglione 42)" (59-60).

Whew. That was a lot of information. But it shows that our pedagogy is rooted in both the study of literature and oral literacy through the ages; and that creative writing pedagogy didn't just start with the Iowa Writers Workshop less than a hundred years ago.

More information: "According to D.G. Myers, whose dissertation on Creative Writing is the most complete source of information about the institution's past, the origins of Creative Writing are found in the early composition pedagogy (especially as developed in the freshman writing courses at Harvard in the late nineteenth century) and the creative expressionist wing of the progressive education movement. Myers regards Creative Writing as primarily a classroom phenomenon and claims that its pedagogical practices were well known among American educators a decade before their first incorporation into a university degree program in the thirties. To the extent that Creative Writing had roots outside the schools, those roots were found in New England transcendentalism and popular journalism. Stephen Wilbers, in his history of America's first graduate Creative Writing program (the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop), makes no mention of the new composition pedagogy or progressive education but stresses instead the role of a vigorous midwestern regionalism that focused interest on the work of apprentice writers. According to this view, the Writers' Workshop of Iowa developed out of the (non-academic) literary activity of local communities and the writer's clubs that organized this activity. Whereas Myers sees Creative Writing as part of a nationwide emphasis of individual-based instruction and professionally useful education, Wilbers argues that writing at Iowa arose as a protest against a homogeneous national culture, especially one dominated by the East.

"Both Wilbers and Myers agree, however, that the architect of Creative Writing within the academy was Norman Foerster, a former student of Irving Babbitt at Harvard and a proponent (along with Babbitt and Paul Elmer More) of the "New Humanism" (see Grattan). foerster -- who became director of the School of Letters at Iowa in 1930 -- was an outspoken literary theorist whose several books on American culture and the history of criticism attempted to establish a coherent foundation for an evaluative critical practice. His desideratum was a unified notion of literary study and practice that he called 'scholarship.' His enemy was 'research'...

"...Foerster's voice was one among many that deprecated the humanities drift toward science. The critics attacked the researchers on several fronts: research involved the accidentals of literature but ignored 'literature itself': it substituted mechanical method for 'living thought'; it prepared students for academic vocations but didn't educate them; it substituted pedantry for learning; and so forth. Many of the arguments were based on 'genteel' assumptions that imagined a natural alliance between Christianity, liberal democracry, and Aristotle, and they invariably presupposed a universie the size of white middle-class males" (64).

The drift towards religion and race at the end of this long quotation aside, it shows that creative writing pedagogy and theory is indeed firmly rooted in literature ... and the reasons why creative writing might have torn itself apart from those studies. As the change in the study of composition and literature became more research-based, the opponents of thinking of creative writing as a theory, but more an organic experience, went another way. Perhaps this is another reason why some creative writing instructors refuse to study theory; it would mean that we would have to acknowledge our base in a discipline from which we've tried to separate.

"In Foerster's 'letters curriculum' -- viz., linguistics, literary history, criticism, and Creative Writing -- criticism was to be the organizing center. Its centrality arose from Foerster's conviction -- shared by many other opponents of research -- that criticism disclosed the universal principles of literariness and, therefore, comprised both a distinct object of study and a basis for all other professional activities" (65). I find this interesting because I currently teach at a liberal arts college with its own Letters Collegium; now I understand why creative writing is separate there from literature, which I think is based in Creative Arts, and composition, which is based in Foundations.

"There are ironies here, perhaps more than the obvious ones. In order to enter American universities, practicing fiction writers and poets identified themselves with a theory of literature that, once Creative Writing was established, they seem to have abandoned. In 1944 when Foerster left Iowa in protest over administration attempts to dismantle his humanist curriculum, both the present and past directors of the writing program -- though expressing personal respect for Foerster -- acknowledged that they saw no essential connection between their program and Foerster's curriculum" (67).

Good stuff, this history. I'm glad I'm reading this book.

Aristotle. Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature. Trans. Leon Golde, Commentary by O.B. Hardison, Jr. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1981.

Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. Charles Singleton. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959.

Churchman, Deborah. "Fertile Time for Creative Writing: More College Courses Every Year." New York Times: Education Winter Survey 8 Jan. 1984: XII/42+.

Grattan, C. Hartley, ed. The Critique of Humanism: A Symposium (reprint). Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968.

Greene, Thomas M. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.

Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980.

McKeon, Richard. "Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity." Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern. Ed. R.S. Crane et al. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1952.

Michael, Ian. The Teaching of English: From the Sixteenth Century to 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.

Russell, D.A. "De imitatione." Creative Imitation and Latin Literature. Ed. David West and Tony Woodman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. 1-16.

Sullivan, Dale L. "Attitudes Toward Imitation: Classical Culture and the Modern Temper." Rhetoric Review 1 (1989): 5-21.