Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T16:53:14.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The Creativity of Literary Writing

from Part II - Creativity in the Traditional Arts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2017

By
Keith Oatley  and
Maja Djikic
Edited by
James C. Kaufman ,
Vlad P. Glăveanu  and
John Baer
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Vlad P. Glăveanu
Affiliation:
Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
John Baer
Affiliation:
Rider University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Abstract

Literary writing involves externalization of mind onto paper or computer screen, and a process of guided exploration over a space of possibilities. Among the arts, this kind of writing may come closest in structure and content to everyday consciousness; this has enabled writers and readers to explore the workings of minds in interactions with others. Artistic writing is a kind of indirect communication in which the creativity of the writer invites the creativity of the reader. In personality, writers are higher in openness but more often depressed than other members of the population. Characteristics on which literary creativity is based make writers vulnerable to emotional disorders. With the exception of conversation, nothing may have been as important in understanding ourselves and others as works of creative writing.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity across Domains , pp. 63 - 79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristotle, . (circa 330 BC). Poetics (Else, G. E., Trans.). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press (1970).Google Scholar
Aristotle, . (circa 330 BCE). Problems. In Barnes, J. (Ed.), The complete works of Artistotle: The revised Oxford translation (pp. 1319–1527), Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Current publication 1984).Google Scholar
Arnheim, R. (1962). Picasso’s Guernica: The genesis of a painting. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Baer, J., & McKool, S. S. (2009). How rewards and evaluations can undermine creativity (and how to prevent this). In Kaufman, S. B. & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.), The psychology of creative writing (pp. 277–286). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Baumeister, R. F., & Masicampo, E. J. (2010). Conscious thought is for facilitating social and cultural interactions: How mental simulations serve the animal-culture interface. Psychological Review, 117, 945–971.Google Scholar
Bell, A. O., & McNeillie, A. (Eds.). (1977–1984). The diary of Virginia Woolf, Five Volumes. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Muni, Bharata. (200 BC). Natyasastra; English translation with critical notes (Rangacharya, A., Trans.). Bangalore: IBH Prakashana (Current edition 1986).Google Scholar
Bischoff, T., & Peskin, J. (2014). Do fiction writers have superior perspective taking ability? Scientific Study of Literature, 4, 125–149.Google Scholar
Black, J. E., & Barnes, J. L. (2015). The effects of reading material on social and non-social cognition. Poetics, 52, 32–43.Google Scholar
Campbell, D. T. (1960). Blind variation and selective retentions in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychological Review, 67, 380–400.Google Scholar
Chanquoy, L., & Alamargot, D. (2002). Working memory and writing: Evolution of models and assessment of research/Mémoire de travail et rédaction de textes: évolution des modèles et bilan des premiers travaux. L’annee Psychologique, 102, 363–398.Google Scholar
Coleridge, S. T. (1977). “Kubla Khan,” in The portable Coleridge (with explanatory note on writing the poem, pp. 156–157). Harmondsworth: Penguin (Original publication 1816).Google Scholar
Collingwood, R. G. (1938). The principles of art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection. London: Murray.Google Scholar
Debray Genette, R. (2004). Flaubert’s “A simple heart,” or how to make an ending: A study of manuscripts. In Deppman, J., Ferrer, D. & Groden, M. (Eds.), Genetic criticism: Texts and avant-textes (pp. 69–95). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Delaney, E. J. (2007). Where great writers are made. The Atlantic, 44 (August).Google Scholar
Deppman, J., Ferrer, D., & Groden, M. (Eds.). (2004). Genetic criticism: Texts and avant-textes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Di Biasi, PM. (2002). Flaubert: The labor of writing. In Christtin, A. M. (Ed.), A history of writing: From hieroglyph to multimedia (pp. 340–341). Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Djikic, M., & Oatley, K. (2014a). The art in fiction: From indirect communication to changes of the self. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 498–505.Google Scholar
Djikic, M., & Oatley, K. (2014b). On the fragility of the artist: Art’s precarious triad. In Kaufman, J. C. (Ed.), Creativity and mental illness (pp. 281–294). New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Djikic, M., Oatley, K., & Carland, M. (2012). Genre or artistic merit: The effect of literature on personality. Scientific Study of Literature, 2, 25.36.Google Scholar
Djikic, M., Oatley, K., & Peterson, J. (2006). The bitter-sweet labor of emoting: The linguistic comparison of writers and physicists. Creativity Research Journal, 18, 191–197.Google Scholar
Djikic, M., Oatley, K., Zoeterman, S., & Peterson, J. (2009). On being moved by art: How reading fiction transforms the self. Creativity Research Journal, 21, 24–29.Google Scholar
Eliot, G. (1856). The natural history of German life: Riehl. The works of George Eliot. Standard Edition: Essays (pp. 188–236). Edinburgh: Blackwood (this edition 1883).Google Scholar
Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995). Long term working memory. Psychological Review, 102, 211–245.Google Scholar
Ericsson, K. A., & Lehmann, A. C. (1999). Expertise. In Runco, M. A. & Pritzker, S. R. (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Creativity, Volume 1 (pp. 695–706). San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ericsson, K., & Simon, H. (1980). Verbal reports as data. Psychological Review, 87, 215–251.Google Scholar
Feuer, K. B. (1996). Tolstoy and the genesis of War and Peace. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Flaubert, G. (1877). Un coeur simple. Paris: Livre de Poche (current edition 1994).Google Scholar
Gardner, H. (1985). The mind’s new science: A history of the cognitive revolution. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Harper, G. (2014). The future of creative writing. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Haviland, J. M. (1984). Thinking and feeling in Woolf’s writing: From childhood to adulthood. In Izard, C. E., Kagan, J. & Zajonc, R. B. (Eds.), Emotions, cognition, and behavior (pp. 515–546). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hayes, J. R., & Flower, L. S. (1980). Identifying the organization of writing processes. In Gregg, L. W. & Steinberg, E. R. (Eds.), Cognitive processes in writing (pp. 3–30). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Hayes, J. R., & Flower, L. S. (1986). Writing research and the writer. American Psychologist, 41, 1106–1113.Google Scholar
Hecq, D. (2015). Towards a poetics of creative writing. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Hellman, L. (1955). The selected letters of Anton Chekhov (Lederer, S. K., Trans.). New York: Farrar, Straus & Co.Google Scholar
Jenkins, J. M., McGowan, P., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2015). Parent-offspring transaction: Mechanisms and the value of within-family designs. Hormones and Behavior, Online 2 July. DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.06.018Google Scholar
Johnson, S. (2006). Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the poets. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Original work published 1779–1781).Google Scholar
Joy, S., & Breed, K. (2012). Innovation motivation, divergent thinking, and creative story writing: Convergence and divergence across the Torrance Tests and TAT. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 32, 179–185.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. (1986). Ulysses. London: Penguin and Bodley Head (Originally published 1922).Google Scholar
Kaufman, J. C. (2001). The Sylvia Plath effect: Mental illness in eminent creative writers. Journal of Creative Behavior, 35, 37–50.Google Scholar
Kaufman, J. C. (Ed.). (2014). Creativity and mental illness. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Baer, J. (2002). I bask in dreams of suicide. Mental illness, poetry, and women. Review of General Psychology, 6, 271–286.Google Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., & Sexton, J., D. (2006). Why doesn’t the writing cure help poets? Review of General Psychology, 10, 268–282.Google Scholar
Kaufman, S. B., & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.). (2009). The psychology of creative writing. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kaufman, J. C., Baer, J., Cropley, D. H., Reiter-Palmon, R., & Sinnett, S. (2013). Furious activity vs. understanding: How much expertise is needed to evaluate creative work? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7, 332–340.Google Scholar
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342, 377–380.Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, S. (1968). Concluding unscientific postscript (Swenson, D. F. & Lowrie, W., Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (Original work published 1846).Google Scholar
King, R. (2000). Brunelleschi’s dome: The story of the great cathedral in Florence. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Kyaga, S. (2015). Creativity and mental illness: The mad genius in question. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kyaga, S., Landén, M., Boman, M., Hultman, C. M., Langstrom, N., & Lichtenstein, P. (2013). Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-Year prospective total population study. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 47, 1–8.Google Scholar
Lee, H. (1996). Virginia Woolf. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Lubart, T. (2009). In search of the writer’s creative process. In Kaufman, S. B. & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.), The psychology of creative writing (pp. 3–22). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ludwig, A. M. (1995). The price of greatness. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Mar, R., Oatley, K., Djikic, M., & Mullin, J. (2011). Emotion and narrative fiction: Interactive influences before, during, and after reading. Cognition and Emotion, 25, 818–833.Google Scholar
Maslej, M., Rain, M., Fong, K., Oatley, K., & Mar, R. A. (2014). The hierarchical personality structure of aspiring creative writers. Creativity Research Journal, 26, 192–202.Google Scholar
Oatley, K. (1999). Why fiction may be twice as true as fact: Fiction as cognitive and emotional simulation. Review of General Psychology, 3, 101–117.Google Scholar
Oatley, K. (2003). Writingandreading: The future of cognitive poetics. In Steen, G.J. & Gavins, J. (Eds.), Cognitive poetics in practice. (pp. 161–173). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Oatley, K. (2011). Such stuff as dreams: The psychology of fiction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Oatley, K. (2013). Worlds of the possible: Abstraction, imagination, consciousness. Pragmatics and Cognition, 21, 448–468.Google Scholar
Oatley, K., & Djikic, M. (2008). Writing as thinking. Review of General Psychology, 12, 9–27.Google Scholar
Patrick, C. (1935). Creative thought in poets. Archives of Psychology (R Woodworth, Ed.), 178, 35–73.Google Scholar
Parmar, P. (2014). Vanessa and her sister. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Pennebaker, J. W., & Chung, C. K. (2011). Expressive writing: Connections to mental and physical health. In Friedman, H. S. (Ed.), Oxford handbook of health psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perkins, D. N. (1981). The mind’s best work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Piirto, J. (2009). The personalities of creative writers In Kaufman, S. B. & Kaufman, J. C. (Eds.), The psychology of creative writing (pp. 149–165). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Poincaré, H. (1908). Mathematical creation (translation by Halstead, G.B, of Le Raisonnement Mathematique, in Science et Methode, Paris: Flammarion). In Ghiselin, B. (Ed.), The creative process. Berkeley: University of California Press (1952).Google Scholar
Runco, M. A., Millar, G., Acar, S., Cramond, B. (2010) Torrance tests of creative thinking as predictors of personal and public achievement: A fifty year follow-up. Creativity Research Journal, 22, 361–368.Google Scholar
Schneider, J. W., & McGrew, K. S. (2012). The Cattell-Horn-Carroll model of intelligence. In Flanagan, D. P. & Harrison, P. L. (Eds.), Contemporary intellectual assessment: Theories, tests, and issues (3rd edition) (pp. 99–144). New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (2013). Creative thought as blind variation and selective retention: Why creativity is inversely related to sightedness. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 33, 253–266.Google Scholar
Turing, A. (1936). On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Second series, 42, 230–265.Google Scholar
Wallas, G. (1926). The art of thought. London: Cape.Google Scholar
Wells-Jopling, R., & Oatley, K. (2012). Metonymy and intimacy. Journal of Literary Theory, 6, 235–252.Google Scholar
Woolf, V. (1925). Mrs Dalloway. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×