English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

12-8-1971

Abstract

Upon reflection, the creative process appears to find a comprehensible analysis in the consideration of linguistics. The psychology of deep structure as used in the analysis of grammar may be extended to the ultimate meaning of words, tense, mode, even case, giving to language a physical reality. The meaning of a word, or in the case of a verb, of its tense and mode, is thus found to carry within itself a deep sense of its aptitude and function, being in fact, the only word or verb that could be applied specifically when its deep structure is fully understood. As an example, I would like to consider the imperative mode. The imperative, of itself, in the traditional grammatical attribution, bears the connotation of "command" in its most simple application, - meaningless apart from the external word association of “imperative” with "command.” The meaning does become axiomatic, but only through rote learning. However, I would like to suggest that the deep structural analysis of "imperative” translates most naturally into the "creative." The initial impulse of the imperative is the creative, willing some thing, being, or action into manifestation. A consideration of such simple imperatives as Be, Do, Dance, Sing, Come, Go, are not expressions of will or force, but the very expressions of being, one to another, still unformed, creating within the being addressed, the forms of consciousness. The imperative is simply “the word." The being addressed conforms through understanding, not through obedience, and the being becomes. In the case of work undertaken (as, by an artist), the form becomes through the deeply imperative mode employed by the artist in his psychic being. Thus both the form and the action are created through the imperative mode as it is understood in a deep structure interpretation. It is in the light of this analysis that this collection of short stories is presented - comments deduced from the human situation, modified by experience, emotional, intellectual and three-dimensional, translated by the Creative Imperative.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Gene Frumkin

Second Committee Member

David Marcus Johnson

Third Committee Member

Harvena Richter

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

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