The research contained in this doctoral thesis submission examines creative writing practice as viewed through the construction of the American road novel genre. As is common in practice-led research, the submission is presented in two parts: a critical section and a creative element. The creative element consists of a research novel and the critical section is in the form of an exegesis about the novel and its contribution to the road novel genre. Called Boy Singing, the novel stands as a creative practice demonstration of the author’s research in this area.
Using practice-led research as driver of the research – and with reference to canonical literary artefacts as models – this thesis attempts to place this writer’s creative practice, the road novel Boy Singing, within the context of writing theory. The contextual framework for the practice is the literary narrative genre of the road novel. Through an examination of the creative writing practice of the road novel protagonist as narrator, in the well-established literary form, as demonstrated by Jack Kerouac in his novel On the Road, and several others associated with this genre, this thesis tests the role and function of the narrator performing as a speaker.
Boy Singing represents a writing process designed to meet certain parameters compiled through an examination of scholarship into the road novel and into narratology. This investigation qualified and constructed a working definition of the narrator of the road novel, data which were transformed into actions which produced the novel.