Choose one question only:

Q 1: “Criticism should concern itself with the structures of a work” (Foucault,

1977). Discuss this statement in light of Barthes’s notion “The Death of the
Author” (1977); applying the critical lens throughout.

The preceding era's overemphasis on mystery and the unknowable component of

creativity, as well as the widespread relationship between these phrases and concepts of
genius, has evolved, thanks in part to the development of creative writing studies. In this
context, creativity has been reframed as a process. In this sense, literary greats like
Shakespeare, the Bronte, and Dickens can now be considered creative writers because they
created their works using a process similar to that used by today's creative writing
students: they had an initial idea, perhaps it sat dormant for a while, they wrote a first
draft, they went through an editing process, and so on. .
Although our understanding of their creative process is limited, their output was the result
of such a process. Some canonical writers, such as Virginia Woolf's diaries, elucidate the
process in the same way that today's students are asked to accomplish in their
commentary. The rise in creative writing study in UK universities from 1970 onwards –
and the accompanying steep rise in writers facilitating such study in the latter half of the
twentieth century – can be seen as ironic, given that it coincided with certain literary
criticism propositions claiming that the author was no longer necessary for the
interpretation of texts.
'The death of the author' (1977) by Roland Barthes and 'What is an author?' (1977) by
Michel Foucault provided more objective frameworks in which to analyze writings in
regard to authorship. The purpose of criticism, according to Foucault, is not to restore the
relationships between an author and his work or to recreate an author's mind and
experience through his works; rather, criticism should be concerned with the structures of
a work. The author's' sovereignty of the author' continues to dominate criticism, according
to Foucault, who describes critics' impressions of the author's depth and inventiveness,
aims and inspiration, as products of the critics' own unadulterated subjectivity.
Reading texts through the author was also chastised by Roland Barthes, who claimed that
"to assign a work an Author is to put a limit on that text, to equip it with a final signified, to
end the writing." These observations prioritized the text and the reader's role in
interpretation over the author's and ideas about the origins of a work.
Q 2: Foreignizing strategies are common in translation studies, and are
sometimes viewed as aspects of creativity. Discuss this in light of translation
theory with examples; applying the critical lens throughout.
Probably the earliest recorded comment on translation in the West came in 46 BCE with
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), who criticized the phrase ‘word for word' translation,
and described his own approach to it.
St Jerome used Cicero to justify his ‘sense for sense’ translation of the Bible into Latin. This
was an important moment in both translation and cultural history as he was commissioned
to produce this version by Pope Damasus at a time when there were competing versions of
the Bible and multiple schisms within the church. Damasus’s aim in commissioning what
became known as the Latin Vulgate was to establish it as the official version. It was adopted
as the canonical text of the Catholic Church by the Council of Trent and remained the
standard scholarly Bible well into the seventeenth century. Over the course of more than a
thousand years, it inspired countless works of art, music and literature. It also had a great
impact on the English language, particularly in terms of religion, with many words passing
almost unchanged into English, such as angelus, creatio, salvatio. St Jerome’s Bible is an
early example of the enormous cultural impact a translation can have. It shows how a
translator can enrich the culture of one language by creatively deploying the resources of
another.
The next golden age of translating was the Abbasid period. This saw the establishment of a
great center of translation in Baghdad, which focused on the translation of Greek works on
science, mathematics, medicine and philosophy into Arabic. The issue of literal versus free
translation also surfaced here. The former is exemplified by Ibn Nā ’ima al-Himsi, a Syrian
Christian whose method was highly literal, translating word for word from the Greek into
Arabic, and, where no equivalent existed, transliteration the Greek word into Arabic. The
second method, exemplified by al-Jawhari, was based on a freer approach in which the aim
was to produce more fluent target texts that preserved the meaning of the Greek sources
without distorting the Arabic. This shift reflects the creative impact of translation itself.
Gutas argues that the wider the diversity of texts to be translated became, so too did that of
the groups of translators who worked on them, which in turn led to greater
professionalization. Translators became more creative in their invention of Arabic
neologisms and, is expected to be scholars in their own right – exhibiting a level of
knowledge equivalent to that of the author being translated , they supplemented the texts
with explanatory commentaries and notes.
These translations made possible further creative breakthroughs in thought, such as the
mathematical works of Al-Khwarizmi, famed for his work on algebra and the introduction
of the Hindu decimal system into the Arab and thence the Western world. The translations
made during this period played a fundamental role in furthering our understanding of the
world. This illustrates the crucial role translation has played in the dissemination and
development of ideas and knowledge across many disciplines, leading to creativity in fields
far beyond the purely linguistic.
Although translation is conventionally conceived as a transfer of meaning, almost any language-
specific detail can be crucial to meaning in particular contexts. Sound and rhythm may sometimes
need to be ‘carried across’ just as much as meaning. While this is most famously the case in poetry,
there are many other genres where sound may be an integral part of the overall ‘message’ too, such
as the rhythms of rhetoric and songs or the sound effects deployed in advertising.

Q 3: Keith Richards believes that some collaborative features of talk are

regarded as aspects of a creative process. What is a creative process, and how
can it be achieved?
The creative process may be an essentially circular process leading nowhere other than
fuller understanding and recognition of inner realities. Because of the different values
which attach to conformity and the different degrees of respect for different traditions, the
creative act in Eastern cultures is often best seen as essentially reproductive. If there is
change or innovation, then the outcome will be likely to be minor and may involve no more
than a different perspective on or reinterpretation of enduring truths
Keith Richards’ work on everyday talk in professional settings. Richards fits into the
applied tradition of CA, selectively drawing on CA where it is relevant to his data. Like other
CA researchers, he believes in paying close attention to the fine details of conversation, and
is committed to the idea that conversation is social action – it gets things done.

Richards is interested in the way that conversation brings groups into existence. In
particular, he considers how group identity is created through collaborative talk. His data
comes from recordings and observations of three workplaces originally, though only two
are reproduced here: teachers in a school and employees in a research unit. The reading
considers how common perspectives are achieved in groups within the school and the
research unit in relation to systems and procedures. ‘Pen’ is a small language school based
in a UK Midlands town.

The school offers general English and business English tuition to students and corporate
clients. It has a core staff of five who have been teaching together for over 15 years. ‘DOTS’
is an independent research organisation, consisting of researchers and administrative staff.
The researchers at DOTS ‘live by procedures, whereas the teachers at Pen a very small,
independent school are more relaxed about the systems within which they operate. Despite
this difference, Richards points out that both sets of staff create or recreate the relevant
procedures and systems when they interact: the rules and procedures are brought into
being by the staff through their actions and in their talk.

As Richards notes, these are achieved through collaborative features of talk, such as
‘repetition’ and ‘collaborative completion’. Both of these features depend on interaction
between the speakers, so that the decisions that are made are created jointly by the various
participants who contribute to the conversations. Borrowing Cooren’s concept of ‘collective
minding’, Richards argues that these interactional features show that the researchers are
contributing ‘to a shared project that could not be completed by any one of them alone and
which depends on their shared input’. Similar to the research scientists at DOTS, the
teachers working at Pen engage in ‘collective minding’ during the process of working out
workplace procedures.