A Materialist and Intertextual Examination of the Process Of
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A Materialist and Intertextual Examination of the Process of Writing a Work of Children's Literature Michael Rosen A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of North London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 1997 Abstract This thesis comes under the terms of Clause 3.2 in the booklet Research Degrees,Regulations and Notes for Guidance for the University of North London where it is stated that 'A candidate may undertake a programme of research in which the candidate's own creative work forms, as a point of origin or reference, a significant part of the intellectual enquiry.' This work, 'shall have been undertaken as part of the registered research programme.' Furthermore, it is stated that the 'creative work shall be... set in its relevant theoretical, historical, critical or design context.' (University of North London 1996: 6) The creative work consists of 65 poems intended for an audience of children and the critical work of the thesis is a process of research into the sources and origins of those poems. It is therefore an enquiry that seeks to uncover how a highly specific mode of literature comes to be written. It is my contention that descriptions of such a process are unsatisfactory unless they incorporate and combine the following four elements: i) an examination of how the particular self under consideration (me) was formed in a specific socioeconomic, and cultural moment; ii) an examination of how, within that moment, that self engaged with the texts made available in the institutions it occupied; iii) an explanation of how the writing involved a synthesis of experiences - of life, texts and audiences; iv) an explanation of how a writer reads his or her own writing. The first two of these elements comprise the 'historical.. .context' noted above and the second two offer aspects of a 'theoretical.. .context'. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 7 Chapter 2 54 Chapter 3 113 Chapter4 167 Conclusion 318 Bibliography 323 Appendix 340 Acknowledgements Thanks to: Harold Rosen and the late Connie Rosen for providing all of the genetic, and much of the cultural, intellectual and ideological source material; Betty Rosen for her indispensable advice and soup; Brian Rosen for his acts - brotherly and theatrical; my children Joe, Naomi, Eddie, Laura and Isaac who have brought me up to the best of their abilities; Professor Ian Donaldson whose sincerity, companionship and forbearance ensured that an Oxford University degree in English Literature could, in spite of itself, be inspirational; Joan Griffiths of BBC Schools Radio, Margaret Spencer (Meek) of the University of London Institute of Education and Pam Royds of what was then Andre Deutsch Children's Books who allied to find me an audience ; Sally Feldman, the senior producer of BBC Radio 4's Treasure Islands, whose belief in my ability to engage critically with children's literature was the starting point for this work; Tony Watkins, Dennis Butts and Dudley Jones of Reading University who not only endured my presence on their MA course but also introduced me to Theory; K.C.H. for mixing solicitude with gentle mockery; my three supervisors - Dr Jean Webb of Worcester College of Higher Education who first made the then decidedly odd suggestion that this thesis was a feasible project, Professor Ruth Merttens of the University of North London whose supervision and cycling have been extremely challenging, and Margaret Spencer (Meek) who, twenty five years after helping my first work get seen, reappeared to help this work see the light of day too. This thesis could only have been written thanks to the financial contribution made by Worcester College of Higher Education. Introduction [The] 'creative work [that] forms, as a point of origin or reference, a significant part of the intellectual enquiry...' (Research Degrees, Regulations and Notes for Guidance University of North London 1996: 6) ...consists in this thesis of 65 poems that I have written or rewritten subsequent to registration and which have now formed the bulk of a publication (Rosen 1996). As these regulations point out, the 'creative work' may be in any field - fine art, design, engineering, musical composition, dance, etc but 'shall have been undertaken as part of the registered research programme.' In my case this set of poems was originated or reached their final draft form, at the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995. The regulations also request that the creative work be 'set in its relevant theoretical, historical, critical or design context' (Univ. of N. London 1996: 6). Of these alternatives I have looked mostly at the 'historical.. .context' which I am investigating in the area of how I, as the author of the work and so the work itself, was formed in history. This raises a range of theoretical questions concerning: the writing process, the relation between language and reality, the role of audience, the formation of the 'self' of the author and the relation between the work and other texts. So it is that the 'intellectual inquiry' I am embarking on consists of a set of questions around the notion of literary production. I am asking: 1) how can a set of poems, written by a particular author, be related to the following: i) the present historical, economic and material context of their authoring; 1 ii) the past historical, economic and material circumstances of the author; iii) the socioeconomic and emotional context of the author's family (or unit of upbringing); iv) the literary and artistic context of their authoring; v) the positioning of the author within a specific past and current literary and cultural context; vi) the personally constructed narrative of the author's experiences, literary and non-literary? 2) How does this set of poems written by me exemplify these relationships? 3) What theoretical framework will provide an explanation for the form and structure of these relationships? Writing as the author of the poems, I am aware of a certain irony in attempting to answer these questions. According to some I am dead (Barthes 1977). To others whatever I intend is irrelevant (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1954). And to yet others, the whole task is pointless because whatever I think that my writing-language is signifying, it is not (Saussure 1959, Derrida 1978); and anyway, in the final instance it's only the reader who knows what's written (Fish 1980). Yet again, there is for some, another supposed level of pointlessness: it is impossible for me to find out why I have written my poems - either because I am unable to see how I am enthralled ideologically within the system (Macherey 1978), or because my `ego' will repress the real sources of my imagination (Freud 1985). However, I, like the university regulations, am making several a priori assumptions: in my case they are that I exist, my labour exists, the objects of my labour exist (Marx 1954). Because language is available to me to describe these matters, unlike de Man (1983) I do not accept that it can be taken as a substitute for them (Bhaskar 1989 and in Shotter 1993; Ebert 1995; Callinicos 1985, 1995). The 2 problem before me, in brief, is this: how did this set of poems come to be written? Because I have framed the problem in this way, my approach to the poems will not be textual analysis in the customary literary sense. I will not be seeking to derive meaning, contradiction, irony, unity, patterning or the like from the poems themselves. Rather, I am engaged here in an enquiry into the relationship between textuality and the material, socioeconomic or ideological contexts of their production. Most of the poems relate to childhood, both mine and an intended child audience, so one point of enquiry suggests itself: there ought to be some link between what I write and my childhood experiences. However, at the very moment of writing, I am not a child, so there must also be some connection between the life lived in the here and now and what is being written. I will take up these considerations firstly in Chapter 3 when I try to situate myself both as a child and later as a writer. Secondly, they will emerge as I look at the poems themselves in Chapter 4. That said, I will be extremely cautious in the realm of what might be broadly called psychoanalysis. As a kind of 'Catch-22' this, in psychoanalytic terms could be because I 'repress' this approach. This may be the case, and a fuller picture could indeed be given using some of the resources of this field of enquiry. Yet, I have, for several reasons (rationalisations?), chosen to be very wary about adopting it as a method of enquiry: 1) I am unwilling to narrow explanations of the self and/or texts down to the dyads and triads of family life, the unknowable realms of the unconscious, or any schema of adult life based solely on childhood; 2) I have the feeling that some part of the gap between a piece of writing and the self, which could be occupied by psychoanalytic enquiry, would be best attempted 3 by others, rather than me. In broader terms, I can see there could in other circumstances be opportunities to look at the psychological significance (in the particular social formation we inhabit) of my whole artistic endeavour, eg trying to find answers to questions like: why do I write? why write for children? who do I think I am pleasing? why is it so important for me to 'please' anyway? what is the nature of my gratification derived from this artistic production? what is success? However, I regard these lines of enquiry too beyond the brief of this study.