Is genuine originality a realistic goal for artists?

From fashion to fantasy, entertainment to enterprise, we seek the 'new' as the means to originality, change, and creativity. And for the most part, we imagine the new is always identifiable as a radical break from the past. But the nature of the new is more elusive and unknown than it first appears. Is the new an illusion, and the search for originality a mistake? Should creative endeavour be focussed on other goals, such as the timeless, the provocative, and the beautiful? Or is the new an essential part of life, creativity and action, without which we would have mere passive re-orderings of the known?

Martin Puchner is a literary critic and philosopher. He is the Byron and Anita Wien Chair of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Claire Hynes is Associate Professor in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and an author of fiction and creative non-fiction. Stanley Fish is a literary critic, legal scholar, and public intellectual. Renowned for his role in developing reader-response theory in literary studies, Fish has written on a wide range of topics including the poetry of John Milton, the distinction between free speech and academic freedom, and the doctrine of liberalism.

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