CRITICAL SURVEY
Call for Papers: A New Subgenre for a Condition as Old as Undesirable: A Study of Writer’s Block in Creative Works
Guest Edited by Mohamed Salah Eddine Madiou, University of Jordan
There exists a hitherto untapped form of literature that centers around the artist’s loss of creative momentum in the composition of their art, a condition Austrian psychiatrist Edmund Bergler first called “writer’s block” in 1950. All manner of artists experience it. Yet, while it can be mild and temporary for some, it can be persistent and traumatic for others, such that it can find expression in the creative work they struggle to compose and even become the idea or plot they once pained to find. In this special issue, we intend to contribute the writer’s block subgenre to literature. Focusing on a wide array of creative works, we shall particularly explore how and why some artists may reflect on writer’s block in their creative works. While it seeks to introduce a new subgenre and, by implication, a whole set of books and materials to read and appreciate, this issue aims to contribute to the universal, timely, complex, yet insufficiently examined issue of writer’s block. Most importantly, it seeks to probe the unusual case where this condition can be such in the artist’s life that it can impact the production of their work, becoming one of its subject matters and thus making the work metafictional to some extent.
We welcome articles that ponder the following questions:
• How and why may some artists reflect on writer’s block in their creative works? Is this reflection due to a personal preoccupation with, and experience of, this condition in real life? Or is it instead triggered by sociopolitical factors?
• What form does this reflection take in the work? Does the artist discuss writer’s block clearly and openly? Or is it somewhat disguised and symbolic? Besides, what determines the nature of the artist’s reflection?
• How can one say that a work falls within the category of the writer’s block subgenre? Does this subgenre have features of its own?
Some of the creative works authors may want to work on include:
• John Fowles’ novel Mantissa
• Samuel Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan”
• Ted Hughes’ poem “The Thought Fox”
• Keith Douglas’s “Bête noire” poem and drawing
• Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist
• Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow”
• Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own”
• Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining
• Spike Jonze’s film Adaptation
SUBMISSION
Interested authors are invited to pitch their ideas to the guest editor at [log in to unmask] If accepted, a complete article should be submitted by the end of June 2024. The length of each article, including endnotes and abstracts, is between 7,000 and 8,000 words. A brief author biography, including institutional affiliation and contact details, must accompany each submission. Please review Critical Survey’s submission and style guidelines and refer to the journal’s website for information about copyright agreements and permissions.
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