ABSTRACT
These three epigraphs help to set the scene. They also sound some notes of caution. ‘Creativity’ as commonly understood nowadays, the first quotation warns, may be a specifically Western – and, one may add, a specifically modern Western – concept. Such is the current preoccupation with the ‘novel’ and the ‘new’ (at the expense of the ‘old’ and the ‘traditional’), while a question quite rightly lingers over ‘appropriate’ (for whom and what?). At the same time, as the second quotation suggests, any ‘creativity’ worthy of the name is likely to exceed attempts to limit it to a single, once-and-for-all definition; it may always turn out to be ‘something more and different’. Finally, the quotation from an early edition of the OED puts the whole matter of what can be meant by ‘English’ (whose it is, when and where?) up for interrogation. This prompts some vigorous updating and a provocative re-reading shortly.
