• Thu 16-18 C3 (ROBERTSON)

The Historical Novel is arguably the most popular genre among ordinary readers in the English-speaking world. It is mostly ignored by academics, partly because there is a huge amount of very second-rate writing in the bookshops. But not all Historical Fiction is made up of either ?bodice rippers? or ?sword and sorcery?. Many highly respected writers have either written at least one novel that might be regarded as Historical Fiction, or have made a whole career out of (Thomas Hardy, for example). The genre boundaries are flexible, but a text may be regarded as Historical Fiction if it is set in a time before the author?s birth, and attempts to recreate the life conditions and ways of thinking of people in the past.

In this course we will be reading mostly short texts by British authors. We will start with Sir Walter Scott, as his Waverley novels are generally agreed to be the beginning of the genre. We will be reading at least one novel, and watching at least one film. We will also be discussing a range of theoretical matters concerning history and textuality. The aim of the course is to provide students with some tools to examine Historical Fiction, enabling them to write an MA thesis within this area of interest.

http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/kielet/engf/studies/options/index.html