Module: CW7031-30 Context Module: Historical Fiction

Level: 7

Credit Value: 30

Module Tutor: Celia Brayfield

Module Tutor Contact Details: c.brayfield@bathspa.ac.uk

1.Brief description and aims of module

Like other context modules, this one aims to help students explore the relationship between their own creative writing and the large public world as represented by an important theme, tradition or genre, or by an aspect of contemporary literary culture. This is where students step back and situate their own work, understanding some of its wider implications and an aspect of its context. The aim is that this different set of questions and pressures should pose new challenges, invigorating the writing and taking it in new directions – or at least enabling the writer to consider new possibilities. Detailed aims are as follows:

• to help students to situate their work in a large social or literary context (or both) through exploration of the topic and comparison of their own work to the set texts
• to bring students’ work into contact with new intellectual challenges
• to help them identify their own artistic, intellectual and moral aims as writers more precisely by means of the challenges posed by the topic
• to help them adapt their creative work (or make a principled and articulate refusal to do so) in response to these challenges
• to help them understand the relationship between literary form and/or genre and subject-matter, and make decisions about their own work in response

2.Outline syllabus

Students will read a selection of texts, each of which has been chosen to provide a different perspective on the topic. Most of the texts will be identified in advance to allow for preparatory reading, but up to three may be chosen after group discussion. Most will be literary works, but a small proportion may be works of critical argument or theory. To some extent, the tutor’s selection of texts will reflect the composition of the group, especially in terms of the balance between prose-writers and poets.

Indicative text list for CW7030:

Novels described as historical fiction share only one thing – the challenge they offer the writer, in building the world of the story, getting inside the heads of characters from different times and different values, in walking the line between accuracy and authenticity, and in taking a creative approach to a narrative skeleton of facts. In this module we will study a wide selection of historical novels with a view to understanding the techniques each writer has developed to tell their story. The module is obviously a good choice for students writing historical fiction and has also worked well for students writing fantasy as many of the world-building techniques are transferable.

Reading List

Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart, (1958) Penguin, London, 2001 Barker, Pat, Regeneration, London: Penguin, 2008

Burton, Jessie, The Miniaturist, London: Picador, 2014. Kunzru, Hari, The Impressionist, London: Penguin, 2003 Lampedusa, Tomasi di (1958) Vintage, London, 2007

Malory, Thomas, Ed Cooper, Helen ed Le Morte d’Arthur, Oxford; Oxford Paperbacks, 2008 Mantel, Hilary, Wolf Hall, London: Fourth Estate, 2010

Miller, Madeleine, The Song of Achilles, London:Bloomsbury, 2011 Pamuk, Orhan, My Name is Red. London: Faber & Faber, 2008

Key Academic & Technical Texts:

De Groot, Jerome. The Historical Novel (The New Critical Idiom. ) London: Routledge, 2009. Brayfield, Celia & Sprott, Duncan, Writing Historical Fiction. London:Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

3.Teaching and learning activities

• In groups of not more than twelve, students will attend weekly three-hour seminar- workshops, in which roughly half the time will be spent discussing a set text or aspect of the topic, or both, and half workshopping creative work written by students in response to the topic (these creative responses may be parts of the manuscript-in-progress, if there is a connection with the topic)
• They will be expected to write and redraft creative writing, either self-starting pieces or assignments set by the tutor, and bring their drafts for critical attention in the group
• They will be expected to articulate the relationship between their own work and the topic, and make and justify creative decisions in response to the perspectives revealed by the module
• They will be expected to articulate precise, detailed, constructive and courteous critical responses to each other’s writing, and to respond courteously, constructively and thoughtfully to points made about their own work
• They will discuss and practise techniques of argumentative essay-writing as appropriate to the topic

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Course Work
• Description: A folder of 2,500 words (or the equivalent)
• % Weighting: 50%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Course Work
• Description: An essay of 2,500 words
• % Weighting: 50%