The Collaborative Construct: Reading Multiplicity in Multiply Authored Texts

Abstract

The primary purpose of this thesis is to develop a critical framework to facilitate discussion of books written by multiple authors. In multiple authorship, many authors work collaboratively to produce a single text, and all are acknowledged for their contributions. Unlike the majority of texts produced by two authors, or texts where collaborators are unacknowledged, multiply authored texts clearly attribute individual sections (or chapters) to different authors. In this thesis, I assert that multiply authored texts should be addressed in light of the multiplicity of their authorship, and with the substance of the text itself in mind. As such, I propose the concept of the “collaborative construct,” an authorial group dynamic that may be discovered within the text. I address the lack of critical attention afforded to multiply authored texts by using this concept to develop an approach through which we can engage with them. I begin by exploring historical perceptions of collaboration and I look at how these perceptions may influence the undertaking and/or study of collaborative writing. Following a review of research on collaborative writing in literature and the academy, I craft my approach for the study of multiple authorship. The specific multiply authored texts I focus on are three books produced through the Irish branch of the charity organisation, Amnesty International. Yeats is Dead! and Click are relay novels, and From the Republic of Conscience is a text including stories, biographical accounts, a poem, exegeses and essays inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In my reading of the relay novels, I identify my concept of the collaborative construct and consider the effect of the textual group dynamic on the substance of the multiply authored text. In my reading of From the Republic of Conscience (a book that is thus far unacknowledged in criticism), I identify and investigate prime features of the text in order to discover the way in which these features may appear as characteristics of the textual group dynamic of the authors. In this thesis, I seek to expand critical terminology and methodology to better enable the inclusion of multiply authored texts in critical discussions.