ABSTRACT

A key issue in debates about creative writing as an academic discipline is the question whether practice- based research can contribute to knowledge. Creativity has traditionally been valued for its innate qualities that transcend reason and method. The practice of creative writing today has evolved from a craft that can be taught into a discipline with its own research frameworks. This paper outlines how a recent practice- based creative writing PhD took a multi-frame approach to research to write the creative non-fiction thesis: a cultural biography of a portrait of French actress, Sarah Bernhardt. It presents a selection of findings to suggest that poetics as an interpretive frame can offer new insights into the relationship between creative non-fiction and photographic history when drawing on phenomenology and material culture studies. As well as defining these terms and introducing the key thinkers who inform them, the paper proposes that these insights help to define creative non-fiction’s place within the discipline of creative writing.

KEYWORDS

Creative writing, creative non-fiction, cultural biography, photographic history, phenomenology, material culture studies.