Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/20728
Title: Thresholds of Innovation: Conceptualising Imaginative Writing and Fiction Biography
Contributor(s): Vicars, James  (author)orcid 
Publication Date: 2015
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/20728
Abstract: In her recent, wide-ranging survey of innovation in the biographical field, Donna Brien points out that while biography is widely understood as "a literature that tells straightforward, factual stories of lives as written by someone else", it continues, paradoxically, "to be the site of considerable experimentation" (2014: 2). But having catalogued some of the most interesting and influential of these at length, she notes that, despite the acknowledgement of creative construction, debates continue over the validity of experiment and innovation in biography and that [i]nevitably, perhaps, these debates repeat main threads of argument. The first positions biographical fact as being allied to 'truth', while any invention/innovation is, therefore, inevitably related to fiction and, therefore, falsity. The second is to ally conventional forms and practices with ideas of 'solid' history, fact and truth (and 'good' biography), meaning that any experimentation or innovation is understood as leading to falsity, manipulation, underhandedness and a degradation of the form (Brien 2014: 4). While engaging the threads of argument that Brien refers to is not my purpose here, they appear to displace an increasingly large body of work that is recognisably biographical and often embodies a similar breadth of research, but that is imaginatively written or entirely (or in part) presented as fiction.
Publication Type: Book Chapter
Source of Publication: Minding the Gap: Writing across Thresholds and Fault Lines, p. 17-26
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Place of Publication: Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781443880657
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 190402 Creative Writing (incl. Playwriting)
209999 Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 360201 Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting)
450199 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language and history not elsewhere classified
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 970119 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of the Creative Arts and Writing
950104 The Creative Arts (incl. Graphics and Craft)
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 280122 Expanding knowledge in creative arts and writing studies
130103 The creative arts
HERDC Category Description: B1 Chapter in a Scholarly Book
Publisher/associated links: http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/219762524
Editor: Editor(s): Thom Conroy and Gail Pittaway
Appears in Collections:Book Chapter

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