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Module READING THE HISTORICAL NOVEL

Module code: EN383
Credits: 5
Semester: 2
Quota: 22
Department: ENGLISH
International: Yes
Overview Overview
 

From War and Peace to Wolf Hall the historical novel has been a resilient genre consistently capturing the imagination of fiction readers. It has also been of great interest to theorists of the novel. A key insight of this criticism is that a historical novel is less interesting for the story it tells us about history – the events of the past – than for those ideological perspectives on history – the weltanschaunng or world-view – encoded in the texture of the novel. Does a novel convey a static or a dynamic sense of history? Is history merely a setting, a colourful backdrop, against which the action unfolds? Or does the author find a way of writing that conveys the complexity of historical development as it is experienced – intellectually, emotionally and sensuously – by individuals in the flux and flow of their lives as social beings? Does a novel construct history as an inevitable force to which we must tragically submit? Or does a novel encourage us to imagine history as something which collectively we can seize hold of and transform? In this module students will explore these, and related critical questions, through their close reading of a selection of late twentieth-century and contemporary fiction.

Open Learning Outcomes
 
Open Teaching & Learning methods
 
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Open Autumn Supplementals/Resits
 
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