The novel and history: questions and representations since 1945
932Q3
Autumn term 2015
Course tutor: Martin Ryle
Scope and aims of the course
The course explores recent and contemporary novels that represent and interpret historical
experience. It requires students to consider both thematic and formal aspects of the selected
works. The topic of how the novel-form mediates historical experience is addressed in a
variety of works, which illustrate some of the diversity of the novel as an international cultural
form. Our texts include work from Britain, the USA and Canada, as well as a German novel
in English translation.
The initial focus of the course, from the first week through to the ninth, is on a
sequence of novels representing aspects of the Second World War, written between 1948
and 2001. The sequence will be interrupted in the fourth week, when we will explore and
develop the conceptual framework of the course in a reading of some theoretical texts
(extracts will be provided via the Library reading list). In the final three weeks we consider
two feminist dystopias, and ask how the utopian/dystopian genre engages with the
representation of history.
The primary focus of seminars will be on the texts studied. In discussion students will
be expected to comment in detail on chapters, episodes, and passages selected by
themselves and by the tutor. We will also consider larger questions of fictional form and
genre, especially as these relate to the ways in which novels may be read as quasi-historical
narratives.
By the end of the course, a successful student should be able to
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Offer coherent and convincing close readings of passages from the novels
studied
Identify and discuss significant parallels and contrasts between the novels
studied, especially in relation to their representation and mediation of
historical experience
Offer a substantial critical and comparative account of works by two novelists
studied on the course
Show an informed awareness of theoretical argument about the relations
between fiction and historiography
Assessment
The course is assessed by a term paper of 5000 words submitted after the end of the
course. For date and time of submission, please consult Sussex Direct.
The paper will be on a title agreed between the course tutor and individual students.
It will normally refer in detail to at least two of the novels we study. You will need to begin
thinking about your essay during the research week, and you must arrange a meeting with
the course tutor (in office hours) during weeks 10-12 to agree a topic and title.
Week by week outline
The novels will be studied in the order given below. The seminar will involve close
consideration of the ways in which the texts engage with the questions of historical
representation on which the course focuses.
.
Week 1 Elizabeth Bowen (1948) The Heat of the Day
Weeks 2 and 3 Gunter Grass (1959) The Tin Drum
Week 4 History, fiction, historiography: some theoretical perspectives.
Please prepare for this seminar by reading and making notes on the digitised extracts
available via the Library reading list for the course (see below for details).
Week 5 Thomas Pynchon (1963) V
Week 6 Pynchon, V, continued
Week 7 Research and reading week
Week 8 W G Sebald (2001) Austerlitz
Week 9 Kazuo Ishiguro (2003) When We Were Orphans
Week 10 Angela Carter (1977) The Passion of New Eve
Weeks 11 and 12 Margaret Atwood (2003) Oryx and Crake
Reading list
Core texts – recommended for student purchase
All currently available in paperback, publisher as noted; dates given are of original
publication.
Atwood, Margaret (2003 ) Oryx and Crake (Bloomsbury)
Bowen, Elizabeth (1948) The Heat of the Day (Vintage Classics)
Carter, Angela (1977) The Confession of New Eve (Virago paperback)
Grass, Gunter (1959) The Tin Drum (Vintage Classics, in a new translation by Breon
Mitchell)
Ishiguro, Kazuo (2000) When We Were Orphans (Faber)
Pynchon, Thomas (1963) V (Vintage Classics)
Sebald, W E (2001) Austerlitz (Penguin)
Digitised chapters and extracts available online via the Library reading list (see week 4 of
the course outline). These are given in chronological order of original publication.
Zola, Emile ‘On the Rougon-Macquart series’ (1871) and an extract from ‘The
Experimental Novel’ (1881) (reprinted in Becker, J G (ed) (1963) Documents of
Modern Literary Realism Princeton UP, pp.159-167)
Engels, Friedrich (1888) ‘On socialist realism’ (reprinted in Becker, J G (ed) (1963)
Documents of Modern Literary Realism Princeton UP, pp483-485)
Auerbach, Erich (1953) ‘In the Hôtel de la Mole‘, Chapter 18 (pp454-492) in Auerbach,
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature Princeton UP
White, Hayden (1987) ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’,
Chapter 1 (pp1-25) in White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and
Historical Representation Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Jameson, Fredric (1991) ‘Spatial Historiography’, section VII of Chapter 10 (pp364376) in Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Durham: Duke UP
Hutcheon, Linda (1988) ‘Historiographic metafiction’, Chapter 7 (pp105-123) in
Hutcheon (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, theory, fiction London
and NY: Routledge
McHale, Brian (1989) ‘Real, compared to what?’, Chapter 6 (pp84-96) in McHale
(1989) Postmodernist Fiction London and NY: Routledge
Note on accessing the above digitised texts: You will be able to access these by clicking
as appropriate on the titles in the course reading list (to get there, go to the ‘Reading lists’
tab on the Library Catalogue page and enter ‘Novel and history’). You can download and
print copies of all available texts.
Please note that currently the Jameson extract is not available online. You should try to read
it in the book (of which the Library has short loan and core collection copies); but in the
seminar, we will focus on the other extracts – these amount to well over 100 pages and will
provide an excellent basis for our discussions in week 4.
Recommended reading
There is a substantial critical literature about most of the authors whose novels we study.
You will need to seek out material on individual writers in the research for your end-of-course
essay.
The books listed below and in the following section (’Background reading’) represent a
selection from the many that have been written on the general topic of history,
historiography, fiction and politics. There are also some works listed on utopia, feminist
science fiction and narrative theory.
Antze, Paul and Michael Lambek (eds) (1996) Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and
Memory New York and London: Routledge
Auerbach, Erich (2003;1953) Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
Princeton UP
Bhabha, Homi K. (ed) (1990) Nation and narration London: Routledge
Becker, J G (ed) (1963) Documents of Modern Literary Realism Princeton UP
Bloch, Ernst (1988) The Utopian Function of Art and Literature Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press
Fairhall, James (1995) ‘Introduction: What is history?’, in James Joyce and the Question of
History Cambridge and NY: Cambridge UP
Hutcheon, Linda (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, theory, fiction London and NY:
Routledge
Jameson, Fredric (1991) Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Durham:
Duke UP
Jameson, Fredric (2005) Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire called Utopia and other
science fictions London: Verso
Jenkins, Keith (ed) (1997) The postmodern history reader London: Routledge
Jones, Libby Falk and Sarah Goodwin (eds) (1990) Feminism, Utopia and Narrative
Knoxville: U of Tennessee
Kermode, Frank (1967) The sense of an ending: Studies in the theory of fiction London:
OUP
Larbalestier, Justine (ed) (2006) Daughters of Earth: Feminist science fiction in the twentieth
century Hamburg, NH and London: Wesleyan UP
Lefanu, Sarah (1988) In the Chinks of the World Machine: feminism and science fiction
London: Women’s Press
Lukács, György (1962) The Historical Novel London: Merlin
McHale, Brian (1989) Postmodernist Fiction London and NY: Routledge
McQuillan, Martin (ed) (2000) The Narrative Reader London: Routledge
Suleiman, Susan Rabin (2008) Crises of Memory and the Second World War Cambridge
(Mass.) and London: Harvard UP
White, Hayden (1987) The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
Young, Robert (1990) White Mythologies: Writing History and the West London and NY:
Routledge
Background reading
Armstrong, Nancy (1987) Desire and domestic fiction: a political history of the novel New
York: OUP
Brooks, Peter (2005) Realist Vision New Haven: Yale UP
Currie, Mark (2007) About Time: Narrative, fiction and the philosophy of time Edinburgh UP
De Groot, Jerome (2010) The Historical Novel Abingdon: Routledge
Ermarth, Elizabeth Deeds (1998) Realism and Consensus in the English Novel: Time, space
and narrative Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP
Jenkins, Keith and Alan Munslow (eds) ( 2004) The nature of history reader London:
Routledge
La Capra, Dominick (1987) ‘Introduction’, in History, politics and the novel Ithaca and
London: Cornell UP
Lejeune, Philippe, trans. Katherine Leary, ed. Paul John Eakin (1989) On Autobiography
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Middleton, Peter and Tim Woods (2000) Literatures of Memory: History, time and space in
postwar writing Manchester and NY: Manchester University Press
Phelan, James and Peter J. Rabinowitz (eds) (2008) A Companion to Narrative Theory
Oxford: Blackwell
Scholes, Robert (1979) Fabulation and metafiction Urbana: University of Illinois
White, Hayden (1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP
Online journals
The following journal titles, accessible online via the Library web pages, may be useful.
Journal of Narrative Theory
Narrative
Novel