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CW913 Historical Fictions, Fictional Histories

Overview

When Hilary Mantel won the Booker Prize for her historical novel Wolf Hall, she proved to the readers on our island what many had been arguing for decades: that historical fiction was no longer confined to a narrow commercial genre or a mere marketing category. Today, historical fiction has expanded to a diverse and variant body of work, encompassing testimony, experimental writing, creative non-fiction and postmodern meta-fictions. Writers of historical fiction act at a singular intersection between art, history and storytelling. They navigate this complex intersectional and interdisciplinary space while engaging with questions of public memory, historiography and the nature of historical truth.

This module is interested in the craft and ideological complexities of historical fiction. In the era of ‘alternative facts’, can we justify making up stories about the past? What is historical fiction for? How do its writers balance the need to respect the differences between past and present sensibilities with the need to find common ground? What questions and concerns do we take with us, as writers and as readers, when we seek reconnection with the imagined past?

The module will be assessed by a portfolio of historical fiction of 10,000 words. You may include one long piece or several shorter stories. If you would like to submit non-fiction, please come and discuss it with me.

Seminars will be comprised of discussions of the set texts, group discussions of writing exercises, and writing workshops.

Seminar List

Week 1: Why write historical fiction?
How to be Both, Ali Smith 

Week 2: Research, loyalty and art
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel 

Week 3: Myth and Power
The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker 

Week 4: Emancipation
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead 

Week 5: Counterfactuals
To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara 

Week 6: Reading Week

Week 7: The Person and the World
The Parisian, or, Al-Barisi, Isabella Hammad 

Week 8: Lenses
Out of Darkness, Shining Light, Petina Gappah 

Week 9: Ghosts
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders 

Week 10: Hope, conflict and desire
The New Life, Tom Crewe 

 

Assessment

Assessed portfolio of 10,000 words (45 CATS) or 6000 words (30 CATS).

MAW students must submit a portfolio of 70% creative work and 30% essay. Students on the MA in English Literature may choose to submit a portfolio of 70% creative work and 30% essay OR 100% essay

.