The rhetoric of the Prose Fiction Workshop – an analysis of teaching methods at the University of East Anglia

This essay examines the distinction between the rhetoric of literary criticism and the critique of creative prose fiction, as taught at the University of East Anglia (UEA) on its Masters in Creative Writing. It examines the methods and values applied in teaching and peer evaluation on the core course of the Prose Fiction workshop. Distinctions between analytical processes of evaluating literature are too rarely examined, and yet govern the process of the production of creative writing in prose fiction, not only at UEA but in many institutions.