ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a historical case study, through samples, of one mode of creative activity: ‘literature’. Its aim is to extend, or even to explode, notions of what it is to write as well as to create, and ‘literature’ is understood in a capacious sense. The bulk of the chapter is made up of short texts or extracts from longer ones and exemplifies some of the many forms that creativity in writing can take. Most of the texts are drawn from what is traditionally called ‘English literature’, but would better be called ‘literatures in English’ since there are many more cultures and traditions in play than one. Some of the texts are in older and newer forms of English quite different from what is currently the standard printed form. Moreover, in their initial modes and moments of circulation (as speech, song or performance, for example) some of these materials are not strictly ‘literature’ or even ‘writing’ at all.
