Creative Authorship(s): Looking for Partners in Devising a Collaborative Funding Application
Ben Jonson frequently referred to his literary works as his ‘mind children’ in the paratext accompanying his printed plays, and he movingly reversed the analogy in his commemorative poem “On My First Sonne”: rendering tribute to the deceased child by styling him his father’s “best piece of poetry”. Jonson is associated with a bold renegotiation of authorship in the early modern period, but he was far from alone in turning to procreational metaphors in descriptions of his literary practice. Metaphors of this kind were useful to writers in suggesting a close relationship between author and text and to grapple with the notion of creative innovation vis-à-vis tradition.