106-411 Contemporary Historical Fictions

Formerly available as 106-059. Students who have completed 106-059 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours in English, see Honours entry.

This subject explores the relationship between fiction and history across a range of contemporary historical fictions. Formerly a predominantly realist genre which aimed at mimetic representation, historical fiction now locates itself primarily within the transformative modes of romance, allegory and magic realism. Students should develop a critical awareness of historical fiction as a specific literary genre, as we examine the distinctive forms and concerns of postmodern narrative in foregrounding the problems of retrieving and refiguring the past. Students will engage these fictions against a background of contemporary theorisations of the relationship between history and literary postmodernity.

Written work totalling 5000 words for 4th year, 6000 words for masters students.

A subject reader will be available.

• P Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang.
• G G Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Penguin.
• T Morrison, Beloved. Vintage.
• T Pynchon, V. Vintage.
• I Sinclair, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings. Granta.
• S Sontag, The Volcano Lover: A Romance. Vintage.
• J Winterson, Sexing the Cherry. Vintage.