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A Comparative History of the Literary Draft in Europe
Edited by Olga Beloborodova and Dirk Van Hulle
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXV] 2024
► pp. 305–319

1.4.3
Prose

Extended and distributed creativity in prose fiction

This chapter addresses and questions the seemingly solitary nature of prose writing, using two cognitive theories (extended mind and distributed cognition) that place cognition outside the boundaries of the human brain and advocate instead an inextricable connection between the brain and the world. Specifically, the tight coupling between the writing mind and literary drafts testifies to the crucial importance of these objects to the writing process, and a number of examples of creative collaborations (the Shelleys, Michael Field, Ilf and Petrov) demonstrate that creativity in prose writing is more often than not distributed and as such is not that different from those genres that are typically considered collaborative (such as drama). This distribution of cognition also applies to works that are not co-authored, as Beckett’s correspondence shows. The conclusion relates the chapter’s main ideas to the future of prose writing, namely the advent of AI and its impact on creativity.
Keywords: prose fiction, collaborative creativity, manuscript research, writing studies, cognitive science, extended mind, distributed cognition, literary collaborations, AI
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Authorship and writing studies
  • Extended mind thesis
  • Distributed cognition
    • Overt distributed cognition: Collaborative authorship in prose fiction
    • Covert distributed cognition: Samuel Beckett’s correspondence
  • Conclusion: Authorship and AI
  • Notes
  • References
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References (36)
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