Cirrus@Austlit

'The doctorate in Creative Writing in Australian universities legitimates itself in the academic context with an exegetical component that seeks to translate creative endeavours into acceptable research-speak in order to be measured, funded and sanctioned. However in many of my doctoral students’ work, the exegesis has become fictively playful to such an extent that it is almost indistinguishable from the creative artefact it seeks to legitimate. Conversely, in other works, the creative artefact performs an exegetical function. Using epigraphs from interviews with JM Coetzee as prompts, this paper explores various student works in which the boundaries between artefact and exegesis have become blurred. ' (Publication abstract)