Katya Stoycheva
Papers of BAS. Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 7, 2020, No. 1
Psychological studies of creativity in the literary domain
Katya Stoycheva
Abstract. This paper extrapolates creativity research and its findings to the field of literary creativity and its investigation. Psychological studies of the creative person, the creative process and the creative product in the domain of literature are reviewed and discussed. Their presentation exposes the variety of methodological approaches that were employed: case studies of eminent writers which outline the foundations of their contributions or examine their way of doing what they do; qualitative analyses of writers’ interviews, commentaries, and personal accounts of their writing process and career path; empirical studies of the personality of outstanding contemporary writers; historiometric analyses of writers’ life span and creative productivity in different literary genres; and conceptually driven and empirically grounded content analyses of literary texts.
Keywords: psychology of creativity, literature, eminent creators, creative writers, literary works