Re-Writing The City: The Value Of Psychoanalytic Perspectives To The Creative Writer

This research uses creative practice to explore the value of a psychoanalytic approach to the city for the creative writer. The thesis is composed of a novel about the city of Leeds and a critical commentary, the combination of which examines the impact of specific psychoanalytic ideas OJ:l the creative writing process. I have used Pile's (1996) psychoanalytic reappraisal of city studies together with the semiotic theorie~ of Barthes (1997) to develop a new approach to the function of cities in literature. I have explored the ways in which the creative writer can research the city through methods that I have termed 'analytical' and 'dialectical' and the ways it can be written about in a 'top-down' or 'bottom-up' approach. I suggest a form of 'creative urban semiology' which encourages the creative writer to engage imaginatively with the city as a textual source and, ul~mately, as a character in its own right. Individuals act out their fears and desires across the city and it acts upon them, principally through inferring power relations and status but also by the association of more subtle significations. The research has found that an appreciation of psychoanalytic ideas about the city, viewed in semiotic terms and in relation to the individual, is of value to the creative writer. Psychoanalysis provides useful approaches to the representation of the city in literature and a more nuanced form of description capable of a broad range of expression.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo