Beyond the writing impulse: crafting creative writing research in French
How does creative writing in a second language stimulate linguistic, cultural and textual encounters? What tools can we use to enable individual voices to be expressed? How do languages interconnect in the fabric of the text? While these questions have been examined from a literary criticism perspective, the stimulating field of creative writing research has so far been largely unexplored in Modern Languages in the UK. This project seeks to address this gap through the development of methodologies which will boost creative writing research and teaching and allow for a renewed understanding of multilingual literary creation, through practice-based work.
This project will allow Dr Elise Hugueny-Léger to spend the academic year 2022-23 at Cergy-Paris Université to develop collaborative creative writing research projects.
The project’s objectives are threefold:
- To enhance teaching innovation and develop new lines of pedagogical research
- To stimulate research into second-language and multilingual creative writing
- To develop new lines of enquiry into recherche-création
Based on a conception of art as experience as theorised by John Dewey, the approach integrates practice-based methodologies to facilitate the transition from the writing impulse to the written text. It combines practical writing workshops, critical and theoretical enquiry, and the close study of writers’ drafts and notebooks.
During her time at Cergy in 2022-23, Elise will work as associate researcher with the ‘Héritages: Culture/s, Patrimoine/s, Création/s’ research unit and the ECF/ Écritures créatives en formation research group.
The project is supported by a Leverhulme International Fellowship.
