1st Edition
A Philosophical Inquiry into Subject English and Creative Writing
While engaging with the current political-educational climate of England, this book offers a timely contribution to debates around questions of knowledge in relation to education and school-level English by drawing together theories of individual and disciplinary knowledge.
The book provides a philosophical conception of knowledge – as fundamentally embodied at the level of the individual, and a matter of cultural form at the level of shared or "common" knowledge – and an analysis of the implications of this for schooled English. The research draws from various related fields including literary criticism, philosophy (of knowledge and of symbolic form), and phenomenology. The book rethinks general notions of knowledge and lays out the problems that exist within knowledge and language systems in education, especially secondary and university levels.
This highly relevant and informative book offers an insightful resource for academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of education studies, educational policy and politics, philosophy of education, and literature studies.
Part I: Aims and Scope of the Book 1. Writing in, about, and from the Classroom 2. Mapping the Terrain of Schooled English and Creative Writing Part II: Problems of Knowledge 3. Problems of Individual Knowledge 4. Problems of Curricular and Disciplinary Knowledge: The Curious Case of School English 5. Reading/Writing and a (Very) Rough Sketch of Revised English Studies (Coda to Part II) Part III: Writing Beyond the English Studies Classroom 6. Thinking as a Kind of Writing, Writing as a Kind of Philosophy; or, On Lightbulb Moments
Biography
Oli Belas is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and English, University of Bedfordshire, UK.
"This lively, thoughtful and well-written book draws both on its author’s practical experience and philosophical ideas to develop its important, fascinating argument about the role of creative writing in the discipline of English. Every chapter is full of insight, and the book should advance the discussion of creativity in the study of English."
- Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
