ABSTRACT
Some of the work that teachers do implies that the ‘imitation’ of literary models has a peculiar value; if children can plausibly invent another Hercules story one feels they have gained access to something in the culture and through that to something in themselves. The children’s imitations of Ted Hughes’s manner for the minstrel were thus set in the context of Thomas’s earlier attempt, though author ruled out more imitations of that particular speech. If the writer cannot avoid ‘quotation’, the imitation of a model may have the freely creative character of all writing. An imitation that lacks originality does so because it is unsuccessful as writing, not in consequence of its being an example of an unoriginal kind of writing. There were signs in most of the work of an attempt to draw on the classroom experience so far described.
