Creative Writing Joins Rhetoric and the Public Arts: A Comparative Study of Craft, Workshop, and Practice Beyond English Studies

Abstract

Creative Writing Joins Rhetoric and the Public Arts: A Comparative Study of Craft, Workshop, and Practice beyond English Studies analyzes the field of creative writing through the lenses of classical rhetorical scholarship, aesthetic theory, and craft criticism in the arts. Through a historical analysis of techne (craft or method) and telos (end or final cause) in the work of Aristotle and Plato, I argue that what we call "craft" often suffers from a limiting definition that privileges formal and material constraints over the more vital concerns of knowledge and consciousness reflected in artistic education. Craft knowledge is demonstrated through the processes of art-making internalized by the student apprentice. No matter the form or discipline, craft practice embodies the processes and consciousness that make art education possible. The dissertation analyzes concepts of craft as technique while revealing how artistic method illuminates the ends to which art serves. Craft consciousness, a term outlined in this dissertation, is defined as an awareness of artistic method and practice across disciplinary boundaries. If applied by teachers and students of creative writing, this consciousness will redefine writing workshop, curriculum design, programmatic elements, and the mission of creative writing as an academic discipline. By shifting the field toward the craft principles shared with the performing and fine arts, the dissertation uses rhetoric and public arts as lenses for reimagining the mission of creative writing more broadly as a discipline simultaneously engaged with democratic and occultic principles. In proposing an alternative approach to traditional writing workshop by examining author-function, this dissertation also draws from Paulo Freire's term "nuclei of contradiction" in order to argue for a pedagogy that attends to the inherent contradictions that form the foundation of creative writing culture. Freire's "critical consciousness" informs the term "craft consciousness" and the latter term forms the scaffolding in which to reimagine educational principles in creative writing. In order to reimagine craft and workshop practices in traditional and virtual spaces, this dissertation examines how theories, histories, and practices in craft will transform creative writing into a field grounded in artistic practice and intellectual inquiry.