Writer, Reader, Author, Critic: Literature in Theory and Practice

Author

Lilly Myers

Date of Award

2022

First Advisor

Jane Wanninger

Second Advisor

Brendan Mathews

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is to examine different ways of thinking about meaning in literature. As a field, literary studies has a broad range of approaches to understanding, unpacking, and analyzing meaning in text, but even within more philosophical and analytical approaches to text, the ideas and concepts are so vast and varied to be difficult to use as an individual scholar or creative writer. However, the depth and nuance that structuralist and post-structuralist theoretical thought bring to literature are so valuable to creating a complex understanding of our relationships between the act of writing, the act of reading, and the many deep spaces between. Creative writers often approach these same spaces with an equal level of depth and nuance, but the gaps in language and scholarly practice between creative and critical fields often flatten conversations across fields. In many ways, this thesis is an attempt at speaking across those lines, by taking a set of creative authors and a set of theoretical authors, and examining their ideas in the context of the most basic understanding of literature. By examining authors in this way, I hope to find commonalties and patterns within the structures of thinking about writing across different theoretical, creative, and interpretive disciplines, and help resolve the gaps in language and ideas that have frustrated me in my time moving between literary theory and my own personal creative practice.

Recommended Citation

Myers, Lilly, "Writer, Reader, Author, Critic: Literature in Theory and Practice" (2022). Senior Theses. 1616.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/sr-theses/1616