This module explores the genre of historical fiction, focusing on a range of twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels with historical settings. We will consider the importance of 'the past'; different social and cultural contexts; how the past is both appropriated and interacts with the present; and the way in which our views are shaped and/or challenged through these historical narratives. Attention will be paid to lenses through which to read the past, particularly identity, race, sexuality, deviance and crime.

Knowledge and Understanding:

• Demonstrate an informed knowledge of cultural and historical perspectives to historical fiction;
• Demonstrate an awareness of critical approaches to historical fiction;
• Critically consider construction/s of the past and their interaction with our cultural identities.

Intellectual Skills:

• Appraise and assess sources;
•  To reach conclusions about the issues raised in the course, and base these conclusions on sound reasoning.

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

• Close reading;
• Analytical skills;
• Research skills;
• Essay/assignment writing skills.

This module is taught in 10, two-hour sessions, delivered on a weekly basis.

• Lectures: these introduce the basic information to the students, and will form the bulk of provision. Hence there will be basic seminar-style sessions with tutor leading with talk and PowerPoint presentations during the first part of the session as basis for group discussion and questions and answers in the second part. Students will be invited to read up on relevant topics for homework including specific passages.
• Discussion and group work: where appropriate, students will work in small groups to apply what they have heard in the lectures to a given case study. Students are asked to reflect critically on set questions and to contribute their own ideas.

• The ability to communicate ideas and arguments effectively, whether in class discussion or in written form
• The ability to work effectively with others in groups and to learn collaboratively through discussion and interaction
• The ability to think critically, analyse texts, evaluate arguments, and challenge assumptions.
• The ability to formulate and justify arguments and conclusions and present appropriate supporting evidence.
• The ability to locate relevant resources in the library and online and use them appropriately in academic work.
• The ability to use a range of information technology resources to assist  with information retrieval and assignment presentation.
• The ability to independently organise study methods, manage time effectively, and prioritise workload to meet deadlines.

Formative assessment / feedback will occur on a weekly basis through class discussion and group work.

Week 1Introduction: Historical Fiction and 'the Past'

Week 2 Post-colonial Re-imaginings: Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

Week 3Wide Sargasso Sea

Week 4 Queering the Past: Sarah Waters's Fingersmith (2002)

Week 5Fingersmith

READING WEEK

Week 6The Australian Past: Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)

Week 7True History of the Kelly Gang

Week 8 Historical Crime: Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace (1997)

Week 9Alias Grace

Week 10 Conclusion and Question and Answer Session

Literary texts used in module

Atwood, Margaret (1997) Alias Grace (London: Virago)
Carey, Peter (2000) True History of the Kelly Gang (London: Faber and Faber)

Rhys, Jean (1966) Wide Sargasso Sea (London: Penguin)

Waters, Sarah (2002) Fingersmith (London: Virago)

Key Resource List

Higdon, David Leon (1984) Shadows of the Past in Contemporary British Fiction. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Johnsen, Rosemary Erickson (2006) Contemporary Feminist Historical Crime Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Johnson, S. L. (2005) Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. Westport and Oxford: Libraries Unlimited 

Spargo, Tamsin, ed (2000), Reading the Past: Literature and History. Basingstoke: Palgrave 

Wallace, Diana (2005) The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan.

Beck, Peter J., (2012) Presenting History: Past and Present. London: Palgrave Macmillan

Gilmour, Robin (2000) ‘Using the Victorians: the Victorian Age in Contemporary Fiction’, in Alice Jenkins and Juliet John, eds. Rereading Victorian Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp.189-200.

Gutleben, Christian (2001) Nostalgic Postmodernism: The Victorian Tradition and the Contemporary British Novel. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Heilmann, Ann and Mark Llewellyn, eds (2007) Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women’s Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hutcheon, Linda (1989) ‘“The Pastime of Past Time”: Fiction, History, Historiographical Metafiction’, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge). Also in Michael J. Hoffham and Patrick D. Murphy, eds (1996), Essentials of the Theory of Fiction (Leicester: Leicester University Press), pp. 473-95.

Hutcheon, Linda (1988), A poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction. New York, London: Routledge 

Kaplan, Cora (2007) Victoriana: Histories, Fiction, Criticism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

King, Jeannette (2005) The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kucich, John and Dianne F. Sadoff, eds (2000) Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lowenthal, David (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pieters, Jürgen (2005) Speaking with the Dead: Explorations in Literature and History. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Rich, Adrienne (1971) ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision’, in Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi and Albert Gelpi, eds (1975) Adrienne Rich’s Poetry (New York: Norton), pp. 90-98.

Roberts, Geoffrey, ed. (2001), The History and Narrative Reader. London & New York, Routledge 

Showalter, Elaine (1987) The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 (London: Virago, 1987)

Taylor, Miles and Michael Wolff, eds (2004) The Victorians since 1901: Histories, Representations and Revisions. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

White, Hayden (1990) Tropics of Discourse: Essays in  Cultural Criticism (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press; first published 1978).

Widdowson, Peter (2006) ‘“Writing back”: contemporary re-visionary fiction’, Textual Practice, vol. 20: 3, pp.491-507.