Introductory description

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?

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1 - History and Myth

Week 2 - New Voices from the Old Past

Week 3 - Of God and Mystery

Week 4 - Games of Thrones

Week 5 - The Stage of the Home

Week 7 - Heroes and Fools

Week 9 - Ships and Shipability

Week 10 - Writing Workshop

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate advanced creative and research skills to support the effective conception, design, and production of a project in the historical fiction genre that constitutes an original contribution to its field
• Show understanding and critical analysis of the ways in which modern writers convey historical and geographical settings through research and imaginative engagement
• Demonstrate the ability to produce a piece of writing relating to the genesis and execution of their project, with original critical analysis that contextualises their work within the scholarly and creative traditions of the historical fiction genre

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Subject specific skills

.Specific application of writing technique as it applies to historical fiction (in particular, the selection of appropriate voice and the use of research for narrative purposes), and a specific knowledge of the genre itself.

Transferable skills

.Broader skills of creative writing (including structuring, planning, editing, peer review, precision at the level of the sentence), research (including source analysis and discovery), and reflective writing (including critical analysis of genre, theme, process, influence, and technique).