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.

• be able to apply research skills and critical methods to a field of inquiry;

• develop persuasive arguments on a given topic;

• communicate oral and written arguments and ideas effectively and articulately.

An essay of 5000 words for 4th year students or 6000 words for masters students 100% (due at the end of semester).

A subject reader including critical and theoretical work by Walter Benjamin, George Lukas, Linda Hutcheon and Susan Stewart will be available from the University Bookshop.

• 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.