Text as process : creative composition in Wordsworth, Tennyson and Emily Dickinson

Bushell, Sally (2009) Text as process : creative composition in Wordsworth, Tennyson and Emily Dickinson. University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, Virginia. ISBN 9780813927749

Abstract

Bushell’s aim in Text as Process is to develop a research method for the study of compositional material. Although she draws on an international context – mainly French and German traditions – for current approaches to textual criticism, hers is the first book to apply a new form of critical analysis to authors in the Anglo-American tradition. Bushell revisits issues of intention within process and makes this the center of her new approach, employing “case studies” of the work of three major nineteenth-century poets: Wordsworth, Tennyson and Dickinson. She applies her methodology to each writer in different ways, allowing for cross-comparison as well as the recognition of individual distinctiveness in creativity. In doing so, Bushell demonstrates the need for a unique hermeneutics in relation to the making of the literary work of art. The author concludes with a philosophical account of the status and meaning of the literary work as it comes into being.