Writing in A Cage: Creativity Under Structural, Political, Religious Constraints
Article Collection: Writing in A Cage: Creativity Under Structural, Political, Religious Constraints
Journal: Cogent Arts & Humanities
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Article Collection Guest Advisor: Dr. Natalia Morzhenkova, Huaqiao University (China)
Manuscript Submission Deadline: April 9, 2027
Cogent Arts & Humanities invites submissions for its Article Collection titled “Writing in A Cage: Creativity Under Structural, Political, Religious Constraints.”
About the Article Collection
About the Article Collection
Since the Romantic era, freedom has been regarded as an essential condition of creativity. However, literary history reveals that a broad array of restraints (both self-imposed and involuntarily endured) has always shaped literary production. Creative freedom is never absolute but is rather a Romantic myth. While a writer’s boundless imagination can conceive of literally anything, the materialization of the original idea inevitably collides with a complex set of literary and extraliterary boundaries. The separation of “constraint” as “a superior form of freedom” from cliché-like “convention” (Jan Baetens, Jean-Jacques Poucel) dismantles the Romantic opposition between restriction and freedom but introduces a new polarity: “good” liberating constraints vs. “bad” automatizing conventions. Keeping in mind that this discussion is usually associated with the French Oulipo (Raymond Queneau, François Le Lionnais), this collection seeks to draw a broader parallel between institutionalized literary conventions and broader socio-political, cultural, or religious restrictions.
This collection explores how, rather than merely restricting creativity, various constraints—from literary conventions to socio-political pressures—can act as catalysts for innovation and new forms of expression. It challenges the Romantic notion of absolute freedom by examining the interaction between imposed limits (such as censorship) and the writer’s ability to generate meaning, drawing on concepts like "defamiliarization".
Key Topics for Submission:
- Formal Constraints: The role of self-imposed rules in overcoming conventional constraints, referencing works like Alphabetical Africa and Locus Solus.
- Agency and Struggle: Achieving creative freedom through a conscious confrontation with literary dogmas.
- Political and Religious Subversion: How writers use specific styles to circumvent censorship, such as in The Palace of Dreams or through techniques like grotesque realism.
Submission Guidelines
Manuscript Submission Deadline: April 9th, 2027.
- The collection welcomes theoretical, historical, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature.
- Publication is Open Access.
- Submit via the Cogent Arts & Humanities portal.
- All submitted articles will undergo peer review and should they be accepted will be required to pay an article publishing charge.
Visit the publisher’s website for more information:
For scholarly or thematic inquiries, contact Dr. Natalia Morzhenkova at Natalia.morzhenkova@gmail.com
For scholarly or thematic inquiries regarding this Article Collection, you are welcome to contact Guest Advisor Dr. Natalia Morzhenkova at Natalia.morzhenkova@gmail.com
Please contact Commissioning Editor Kristen Brida at kristen.brida@taylorandfrancis.com with any submission questions or requests for discount codes relating to this Article Collection