The course will put the “story” firmly in to History. We will investigate how it is that from Shakespeare to Hilary Mantel, certain historical episodes have been invented and re-invented in order to produce and re-produce meaning and identity in British culture.
We will discuss the spectacular rise in popularity of the genres of Historical and Crime/Espionage Drama in the 1590’s and how and why that has continued to exert a powerful influence on how the English view themselves. And we will explore how the structure and values of narrative fiction have shaped the way the English tell non-fiction stories about themselves.
Beginning with the 16th century, we will see how a new constitution demanded a radical new version of historical events. Among others, Polydore Vergil, Thomas Cromwell, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare – Historian, Politician and Playwrights – were drafted in to describe the new reality.
No special privilege was given to fact-based accounts: works such as William Camden’s “Annals” had to compete with Mythical history (the “sundry old tales” of The Act of Supremacy), religious tracts like John Jewel’s “Apology for the Church of England” and dramatic re-creation and invention in the popular theatre. Historical texts like Vergil’s “Anglica Historia” sit comfortably alongside the dramatic fiction of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” and Marlowe’s “The Massacre at Paris” in attempting to explain the new political status quo and generate support for the war against Spain. They are linked by the need to use the propaganda machinery of the day to forge new concepts of national identity in a country that was no longer part of a unified Catholic Europe. And, of course, a national identity firmly pinned to a new style of monarchy, exemplified through dramatic enactment.
We will see how versions of these events still haunt the English. What David Starkey has referred to as “the Tudor Soap Opera” is still running and there’s no end of it in sight. Hilary Mantel’s recent contribution to it has demonstrated its continuing, powerful imaginative hold on us. However, we will also consider other aspects of English History, including the mutiny on The Bounty in 1789, in order to further explore theoretical and ideological approaches to how narratives are developed, whether fiction or non-fiction.
We will consider how particular genres of fiction have lent themselves to this shaping of identity and how we can apply these genres to non-fiction as well.
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