Often on social media and websites for writers I see questions asking how a particular narrative technique could or should be used. Sometimes a writer will ask what is a given technique called. Most writers learn their craft intuitively from their own reading and have no need to be familiar with critical terms nor or … Continue reading 4 Critical Texts for Writers
by William Spell Jr. "Form and function are a unity, two sides of one coin. In order to enhance function, appropriate form must exist or be created."--Ida Pauline Rolf The history of literary theory consists of formalism and something that is not formalism in alternating cycles-circles-for throughout history. Now formalism swings around in the timeline … Continue reading The New Aesthetics: New Formalist Literary Theory
A new candidate for prevailing literary theory has emerged during the last fifteen or twenty years. A popular work published in March of 2019 has pushed that literary theory further out into the reading public and teaching professions. Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, proposes a return to form as a vehicle for creating fiction. Not … Continue reading New Formalism 1: The Pendulum Swings
Life and Literature 