Paperback Writer. A Comparative Study of Normative Poetics in American and French Handbooks for Writing Narrative Prose in the 21st Century.

This project analyzes handbooks for creative prose-writing from the 21st century (2000-2015) in an English (primarily American) and French corpus. The project focuses primarily on storytelling as a craft, a learning activity based on strategic insight and the adequate use of a toolbox, as opposed to the idea of literature as art, based on the mystery of original and free creation. How do such handbooks ‘define’, ‘construct’ and legitimate a writing practice? Which strong constraints and norms are defined and, conversely, which options remain open? How do various images of the writing practice, of author and reader in the handbooks interrelate and contradict each other? Most handbooks also pay attention to preparing a final manuscript, presenting it to a publisher and achieving (commercial) success. The discursive analysis of the normative poetics of handbooks is hence complemented by an analysis of the institutional forces and authorial ‘postures’ that determine the specific culture (both in the broad and in the restricted sense of literary culture) in which they circulate. The comparative dimension of the project allows us to map two divergent contemporary conceptions of writing as a performative act, of authorship and of genre and to reveal the interrelations between the two, often antagonistically positioned, traditions.