Philosophical Inquiry into Subject English and Creative Writing

Oli Belas is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education and English, University of Bedfordshire, UK.

"This lively, thoughtful and well-written book draws both on its author’s practical experience and philosophical ideas to develop its important, fascinating argument about the role of creative writing in the discipline of English. Every chapter is full of insight, and the book should advance the discussion of creativity in the study of English."- Robert Eaglestone, Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK"Oli Belas’s new book offers an intelligent and lively account of school-level English in the UK, and the need to rethink its core approaches and philosophies. […] … the book deliberately wrestles with its own attempts to bring thought to language via writing. It therefore achieves an intimacy and insight not always available in academic writing, and gently encourages its reader to re-think their own writerly practice. […] In sum: this is a gem of a book. It is comprehensive, imaginative, scholarly, incisive, and fun. In A Philosophical Inquiry, Belas’s advocacy for writing as practice – his call that in the teaching of English we re-centre the person as well as the text and thus recalibrate what the study of this subject is actually for - is given impressive depth and urgency through his own achievement of this wonderfully writerly and provocative book. […] This reviewer is certainly still under the spell of this surprising and gorgeous book."- Áine Mahon, Associate Professor in the School of Education, University College Dublin, Ireland

• Part I: Aims and Scope of the Book 1. Writing in, about, and from the Classroom 2. Mapping the Terrain of Schooled English and Creative Writing Part II: Problems of Knowledge 3. Problems of Individual Knowledge 4. Problems of Curricular and Disciplinary Knowledge: The Curious Case of School English 5. Reading/Writing and a (Very) Rough Sketch of Revised English Studies (Coda to Part II) Part III: Writing Beyond the English Studies Classroom 6. Thinking as a Kind of Writing, Writing as a Kind of Philosophy; or, On Lightbulb Moments