The worldwide rise of Creative Writing offers a number of inspirations that might enrich certain areas of Literary Theory (such as concepts of authorship, problems of literary value or the nature of the writing process). On the other hand, Literary Theory might contribute to formulating a solid conceptual basis for Creative Writing, a discipline which all too often relies on unchallenged intuitive assumptions. Lectures exploring all kinds of relations between Creative Writing and Literary Theory are welcome, as well as sceptical contributions which see creativity and theory as rivals rather than allies.

Venue: Josef Skvorecky Literary Academy (Prague)
Date: 15–16 September 2011
Language: English
Lecture length: around 60 minutes
Contact person: Daniel Soukup (soukup@lit-akad.cz)

Participants:
Marianne Gruber (sfd),
Eva Gonzales (Escuela de Escritores),
Mónica Crespo (Idazle Eskola),
Harri István Mäki (Orivesi),
Mattia Garofalo (Holden),
Simona Garbarini (Holden),
Gessica Franco Carlevero (Holden),

Lectures held by Scuola Holden Teachers

Gessica Franco Carlevero: Pratice makes mastery
Italian novelist Alberto Moravia claimed that “you are born a writer”. As if it was a genetic gift, as if the writing DNA molecule actually existed. Nevertheless, since 400 b.c. authors studied texts about the use of language: rhetoric texts. In the Divina Commedia Brunetto Latini states: “Rhetoric is the noble science that teaches us to find and to chose good and beautiful words that nature demands”. Literature is a mix of mystic and technique. Literature is the art of invoking demons, and we need magic spells and rules for the exorcism. A work of fine consciousness is required to give freedom to the writing. The idea of literature changes over the years. Now, the challenge is to find a new and a pertinent rhetoric.


Simona Garbarini: Storytelling in 1936 and Now
What does Benjamin’s essay ‘The storyteller’ have to teach to our schools of creative writing?
What is storytelling? Which is the difference between story and novel? Benjamin’s essay, ‘The storyteller’, written in 1936, offers us some interesting keys to solve these problems. According to Benjamin, storytelling is an attitude more and more distant from us, because of the progressive isolation of modern man. Storytelling died with the decay of craftsmanship: the process of assimilation of a story requires a state of relaxation of the mind as the body is doing is doing something else (weaving, spinning...) that is becoming rarer and rarer. 80 years have passed since Benjamin wrote this essay and, in opposition to his theories, our age witnesses an increasing interest in media as TV, cinema, the web. More and more people find new forms of listening to stories just switching their TV on and doing their housework.
Does this phenomenon imply storytelling? Has storytelling definitively disappeared in our era or has it just transformed in a new kind? If, as I believe, storytelling survived in our era in a different form, Benjamin’s essay provides us a interesting definition of the task of the storyteller as he who fashions the raw material of experience, his own of that of the others, in a solid, useful and unique way. A definition that is fundamental for our work in creative writing schools.


Mattia Garofalo: The devil's in the details: the rise and fall of theory
The rise of creative writing has coincided with a period in which literary theory is suffering, connected with the downfall of the ideological basis for most of the theory produced in the last century. Creative writing allows for a paradigm change, because its theoretical basis
deals with production instead of criticism and so it could breathe new life into a category which in recent years has suffered from the fact that postmodern theory is in decline and new categories have not thus far emerged, by asking new questions and seeking new answers
through the use of a methodology which has already proven its ability to produce results.

This is the program.