Teaching Creative Writing within Philology Programs: Theoretical, Methodological and Didactic Aspects

The article substantiates and describes a system of academic courses titled “Creative Writing: The Philological Aspect” (variants include specialized courses: “Writing and Reading Practices: Between Scholarship and Creativity”, “Creative Writing: Crafting Narrative Texts”; and an interfaculty course: “The Art of Storytelling: How to Write and Analyze Prose?”). These courses share a similar structure despite being offered at different levels of professional training: as core electives for Philology faculties (specialized courses) or as mandatory electives for other faculties (interfaculty course). The course objectives are: (1) To equip students with a metalanguage for analyzing literary narrative texts – specifically, a framework for describing the “grammar of plot” and the narrative function of individual techniques; (2) To provide practical application of analytical skills for narrative structures through experiential exercises (e.g., writing a short story with optional predefined plot constraints). The relevance of such courses stems from: (1) Growing demand for narrative forms of meaning exchange in both popular and academic cultures – from podcasts, journalistic essays, and popular science lectures to scholarly articles and monographs; (2) Rapid development and institutionalization of Creative Writing as a discipline in Russian institutions (e.g., HSE University, SPbSU) amid crisis trends in theoretical literary studies, which increasingly prioritize metascience over analyzing aesthetic meaning. The explication of literary structures through theoretical analysis and practical writing imitation creates a productive synergy between: traditional philological disciplines (e.g., Introduction to Literary Theory, Fundamentals of Text Analysis); interdisciplinary/experimental fields (e.g., creative writing for authors/translators, storytelling for journalists). This interdisciplinary reach ensures: (1) expanded professional competencies for philologists as future educators/practitioners (philological courses); (2) philological training for humanities specialists (historians, sociologists, journalists) to enhance their professional work (interfaculty course).