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Kim Sherwood
Voices in the Archives: Writing from History
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Voices in the Archives: Writing from History
Spring teaching 15-16 Postgraduate (944Q3B 15/16)
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Introduction
This module invites you to consider the ways creative writing uses history, from
pragmatic research strategies to theoretical implications. You will be invited to
develop your own critical thinking and creative writing practice.
We think about how different literary genres engage with the past through form,
narrative and literary language, looking at the cultural impact of contemporary
historical fiction, and also considering work by poets and film-makers. Authors
studied include Virginia Woolf, Sarah Waters, Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Chabon, and Chinua Achebe. Creative writing
workshops introduce key research skills, exploring the methodological implications
of using physical and virtual archives. Working with historical newspapers, letters,
diaries, prints, photographs and other documents, we immerse ourselves in oldfangled vocabularies, and experiment with using language from the past to inflect
our contemporary voices. Topics for discussion include the critical and ethical
implications of writing about real historical events and characters. We consider how
contemporary writing is founded on a long tradition of writing from history - often
re-visiting the past with a particular political or creative agenda. Additionally, we
explore how historical fiction interacts with other genres, for example in the crimehistorical hybrids of Walter Mosley. We consider theoretical work on historical
fiction, memory and nostalgia by critics such as Georg Lukacs and Walter Benjamin.
Books to purchase
Please buy the following books:
Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, (2006)
Michael Chabon, The Final Solution, (2004)
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, (2009)
N.B.
One of our primary texts for week 12 is a film. You can find it on iTunes, Netflix,
Google Play, and in DVD form from those old-fashioned things, shops and libraries.
There are also supporting primary texts for each week, which you are not required to
buy. You are likely to be asked to read an extract of these (e.g. one or two scenes or
chapters), so that we can discuss them as comparative material. Extracts will be
provided as a pdf, photocopy or weblink. Extracts of secondary material to be
discussed in class will also be provided.
As this module includes a rather heavy reading load, I suggest you get started as far
as possible over the Christmas break.
Workshopping writing
Everyone will have the chance to present creative and/or critical writing for
workshopping twice during the term. This writing will be circulated in advance to
enable everybody to share feedback effectively. We'll discuss this process during our
first session.
Group Forum
Forum Group Forum - Group 1
EDIT
Forum Group Forum - Group 2
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Term paper
Word count: 5000 words
Everyone is invited and encouraged to come to office hours to discuss their term
paper.
Option 1: critical paper
Your essay may focus on any of the texts studied on the module.
Your essay should do at least one of the following:
1. Concentrate on a piece of literary writing that represents history (such as a
historical novel, or poetry or drama that engages with the past, etc.).
2. Explicitly engage with critical ideas about history, memory or the past.
Option 2: creative & critical paper
The creative and critical paper has two parts. It must include a critical essay of at
least 2500 words (following the guidelines for the critical paper, above). The
remaining word count may be used for a piece of creative writing, in any genre, that
represents history or the past, or that engages with the idea of history. This may be a
short story, a chapter of a novel, a dramatic scene, etc. This part of the paper could
also be a creative-critical crossover, or a piece of life writing or biography.
For Option 2, there must be a clear link between the creative and critical elements.
Having said this, the critical essay must not be an analysis of your own creative
writing (though this can be mentioned where relevant). For more guidance on
making productive, creative-critical links, talk to me, and see the attached word
document. This is Nicholas Royle's guidelines for the creative-critical dissertation,
but the comments on the links between creative and critical work are very much
applicable to the term paper.
CCW dissertation advice
EDIT
Select General Bibliography (secondary
sources)
This is a selected list of many relevant scholarly publications. Please do
email me to recommend additions to this list, or come to office hours to
discuss specific research projects.
Lucie Armitt, 'Interview with Sarah Waters', in Feminist Review, 85 (2007), pp. 116127.
Mieke Bal (ed.), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, NH:
University Press of New England, 1999)
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2002)
Celia Brayfield and Duncan Sprott, Writing Historical Fiction: A Writers' and
Artists' Companion (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)
Hamish Dalley, The Postcolonial Historical Novel: Realism, Allegory, and the
Representation of Contested Pasts, (Edinburgh: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Ian Dennis, Nationalism and Desire in Early Historical Fiction (London:
MacMillan Press, 1997)
Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010)
Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel, trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Penguin:
Harmondsworth, 1962)
Maria Margaronis, 'The Anxiety of Authenticity: Writing Historical Fiction at the
End of the Twentieth Century’, History Workshop Journal, issue 65, spring 2008,
pp. 138-160
Richard Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650-1950 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009)
Kate Mitchell and Nicola Parsons (eds.), Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant
and Remembered Past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2004)
Geoffrey Roberts (ed.), The History and Narrative Reader (London: Routledge,
2001)
Elodie Rousselot (ed.), Exoticising the Past in Contemporary Neo-Historical Fiction
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
Richard Slotkin, 'Fiction for the purposes of History', Rethinking History, 9:2
(2005), pp. 221-236
Hayden White, 'The Historical Text as Literary Artifact', vol. 3, no. 3, June 1974, pp.
277-303
Week 1: The History of Historical Fiction
Primary text:
Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)
Additional primary texts:
Walter Scott, Waverley (1814). Please read the preface to the third 1814 edition, the
advertisement and preface to the 1829 edition, as well as the first five (short)
chapters. (There is no need - unless you're particularly interested - to read the
appendices to the general preface, or Scott's introduction).
N.B. Waverley is freely available online, e.g. through Project Gutenberg. You can
also find Waverley in the university library. The Oxford World's Classics 1998
edition includes the relevant prefaces.
Secondary reading:
Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (1937). [Extract below].
Suggested reading:
Perry Anderson's essay on historical fiction for the London Review of Books gives a
very useful overview of the development of the genre, as well as a good summary of
Lukács' ideas and role in that development. Do be wary of any declarative claims for
where historical fiction began, however - as the end comments show, it's a fraught
critical point.
Lukacs, The Historical Novel
EDIT
'From Progress to Catastrophe: Perry Anderson on the Historical
Novel.'
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Week 2: Workshop: Letters and the Letter
Form
This workshop will be held at the Keep. Letters under consideration include items
from the Monks House Papers (which include some of Woolf's correspondence, and
letters from readers of Orlando). Please bring Orlando with you, too.
Preparation:
We will be discussing the letter form. This could include both real letters and
epistolary fictions. Consider how letters might be useful for the creative writer. What
about for the literary critic? And how about people's nostalgic interest in paper
letters today, when the form has largely disappeared?
For this session, I'd like all of you to find and bring an example of a letter, from a
historical period that interests you. As a short writing exercise for this week, have a
go at one of the following (max 1-2 pages):
1) Write an extended critical paragraph, close reading the letter and engaging with
form.
2) Write a piece of creative writing in the letter form.
3) Use the letter as research or provocation for a piece of creative writing in a
different form.
This research/writing is instead of preparatory reading for this week, to get everyone
thinking about the literary aspects of letters. Do bring both the letter and your
writing with you to class.
Suggested reading:
Janet Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1982)
Linda S. Kauffman, Special Delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992)
Literary journal The Letters Page, produced by the University of Nottingham and
edited by Jon McGregor, offers fiction and creative non-fiction in the letter form. It's
free and downloadable as a PDF.
The Letters Page
EDIT
Week 3: Writing about Big Historical Events
Primary text:
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Additional primary texts:
Sarah Waters, Night Watch (2006) - an extract will be provided as a PDF below.
Mario Petrucci, Heavy Water: A Poem for Chernobyl (2004). [Extract below]
Secondary reading:
Maria Margaronis, 'The Anxiety of Authenticity: Writing Historical Fiction at the
End of the Twentieth Century', History Workshop Journal 65, Spring 2008, 138160. This journal is available online via the library catalogue.
Petrucci, Heavy Water
EDIT
Week 4: Workshop: Diaries and the Everyday
This workshop will be held at the Keep. We will consider material from the Mass
Observation Archive, and will think about the ordinary and everyday, in contrast
with the focus on 'big events' from week 3.
Writing preparation
Please do one of the following:
Keep a journal for the next week, reflecting on what happens each day. At the
end of the week, consider what you have written, particularly in terms of any
insights it can give you into the journal as a narrative form.
Write a piece of fiction that uses or incorporates a journal or diary.
Find a literary example of journal writing that interests you. This could be an
imagined or an actual journal. Write a short critical close reading, particularly
focusing on its form.
Week 5: Restituting Voices
Primary text:
Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
Further primary text:
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1958) - an extract will be provided as a PDF
below.
Secondary reading:
Read pages 121-146 of The Postcolonial Historical Novel: Realism, Allegory and the
Representation of Contested Pasts by Hamish Dalley, available as a Palgrave
Macmillan ebook through the library.
Read 'After Empire: Chinua Achebe and the Great African Novel' by Ruth Franklin,
The New Yorker, May 26 2008.
Listen to Adichie's 7-minute speech to PEN honouring Achebe.
Tribute to Chinua Achebe
After Empire
EDIT
EDIT
Week 6: Workshop: News and Fiction
In this workshop we look at historical newspapers as a source, particularly focusing
on a number of large, online archives. We will discuss the strange and curious
relation between fiction and news.
Preparation:
For this week, you should explore databases of historical newspapers. In the library's
A-Z of online resources, select 'Newspapers'. Then select the tab for 'Historical
Newspapers'. I particularly recommend the following:
The Times, Guardian, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail
Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers (listed separately in the library's
online resources)
British Library Newspapers 1600-1900
Explore these databases, according to your interests. Find at least one article that
interests you. Experiment with responding to this in your own creative or critical
writing. Print out the original article and bring 5 copies to class.
Suggested reading:
Walter Benjamin, 'The Storyteller', in Illuminations (1955)
Leonnard Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (1997)
Stevens, Bethan (2014), 'Spekphrasis: writing about lost works of art'. Critical
Quarterly, 55 (4), pp. 54-64.
Benjamin, The Storyteller
EDIT
Week 7: Convergence of Genre
Primary text:
Michael Chabon, The Final Solution (2005)
Additional primary texts:
Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). N.B. As The Final Solution is a novella,
you should have enough time to read the also short Devil in a Blue Dress. However,
if you find yourself short of time, just get through as much of Mosley as you can. 3
copies are available from the university library.
Secondary reading:
"Let's Talk about Genre": Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro in Conversation, New
Statesman.
Pages 139-150 of The Historical Novel by Jerome de Groot. Photocopies will be
provided.
Neil Gaiman and Kazuo Ishiguro, 'Let's Talk about Genre', New
Statesman. Link for printing.
EDIT
Week 8: Prints, Photographs and Drawings
This week, we will look at the history of visual media and replication technologies.
We will consider their relationship with literary texts and with creative writing.
There will be an introduction to using visual images as documents, and we will
discuss how to identify and view different media. We will then consider ekphrasis
(writing about art) as a literary form that properly belongs both to critical and
creative writing.
Preparation:
Please read the short introduction to ekphrasis by Stephen Cheeke (pdf below).
Please also read the poems 'Musée des Beaux Arts' by W H Auden, and 'Ode to a
Grecian Urn' by John Keats. Think about how both of these poems engage with
history and the past in their representation of art.
Your writing preparation is to choose an image, which, for you, invites an
imaginative engagement with history. Produce a piece of ekphrastic writing (i.e.
writing about the image). You can write in prose, or poetry, and your writing can be
creative or critical.
For further reading if you're interested in this topic, I've also attached my own
ekphrastic story Daily Mirror, set in the early twentieth century, and an extract
from Antony Griffiths's Prints and Printmaking, in case you want to read more
about the technical aspects of illustration.
Suggested reading:
Fiction
Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999)
Critical
Carol Armstrong, Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 18431875 (Cambridge MA: M.I.T. Press, October Books, 1998).
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in
Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, (1936; New York: Schocken, 1969), pp.21752.
Norman Bryson, ‘Philostratus and the Imaginary Museum’, in Vision and
Textuality, edited by Stephen Melville and Bill Readings (London: Macmillan,
1995), pp. 174-94.
Stephen Cheeke, Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2008).
Hélène Cixous, 'Reading in Painting', in Stigmata: Escaping Texts (1998; London:
Routledge, 2005).
Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the History and
Techniques (London: British Museum Press, 1996). This is an excellent, accessible
introduction to the history of the print.
James Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to
Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1992)
Walter Sickert and Bethan Stevens, Vernet’s Dance Hall / Daily Mirror, preface by
Wendy Baron (London: Sylph Editions, 2011)
Lindsay Smith, Victorian Photography, Painting and Poetry: The Enigma of
Visibility in Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008)
Cheeke, Writing for Art
EDIT
Bethan Stevens, Daily Mirror
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Griffiths, Print and Printmaking
EDIT
Week 9: Historical Fiction in the 21st Century
Primary text:
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009)
Additional primary texts:
Ali Smith, How to be Both (2015) - an extract will be provided as a PDF below.
Next week's workshop:
As we discussed in class, don't forget that your writing for the workshop in week 11
(2000 words max) is due on the day of our seminar in week 10.
Secondary reading:
N.B. You have a relatively heavy week this week in terms of reading / writing. Please
try to read some of the secondary reading (pdfs below), but don't worry if you cannot
manage all of it.
If you are interested in the critical conversations provoked by the success of Wolf
Hall, these two Guardian pieces will give you a good idea. In 'Hilary Mantel on
dealing with...', you can see Mantel rebut tired views of historical fiction and genre,
and in Stuart Jeffries' interview with Mantel you can see those views in somewhatironic action.
Walter Benjamin, Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
EDIT
Cixous, Without End
EDIT
Shapiro, Absent Image
EDIT
Booker winner Hilary Mantel on dealing with history in fiction
EDIT
Stuart Jeffries Hilary Mantel interview
EDIT
Week 10: Workshop
This session is a writing workshop. It will run over two hours, to make sure we have
time for everyone (probably around 2 and a half hours, or a little longer). Please note
that there is a room change, to accommodate the longer session (check your
timetable for details).
As we discussed in the seminar, you are encouraged to post writing that you are
working on in preparation for your term paper. This can be creative or critical, and a
maximum of 2000 words. Work must be posted one week in advance, so we all have
time to read everything.
Week 11: Poetry and Film: the human image
We'll be focusing on both Leigh and Dabydeen today, so as well as watching the film,
make sure you have read Dabydeen's long poem 'Turner', and bring a printed copy
to class. You might want to look at a better, colour image of the painting that
Dabydeen is writing about; you'll easily find copies of this online.
Primary text:
Mike Leigh (dir.), Mr Turner (2014)
Additional primary texts:
David Dabydeen, Turner (1995) [pdf below].
Suggested reading:
Bryan Cardinale-Powell and Marc DiPaolo (eds.), Devised and Directed by Mike
Leigh (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). In this collection, see especially the
essays 'Costuming Choices' and 'The Grotesque State of the Nation'.
Bert Cardullo and Mike Leigh, ' "Making People Think Is What It's All About": An
Interview with Mike Leigh', Cinema Journal, 50.1, Fall 2010, pp. 1-18.
Jean-Louis Comolli, 'Historical Fiction: A Body Too Much', Screen, 19.2, 1978, pp.
41-54.
Tobias Döring, 'Turning the Colonial Gaze: Re-Visions of Terror in Dabydeen's
Turner', Third Text, 11.38, 1997, pp. 3-14.
Leger Grindon (ed.), Shadows on the Past: Studies in the Historical Fiction Film
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
Laura E. Nym Mayhall, 'Teaching British Cinema History as Cultural History',
Radical History Review, 83, Spring 2002, pp. 193-7.
Dabydeen, Turner
EDIT
Week 12: Revision and Term Paper Workshop
We will use this session to look back over the term and look forward to your term
paper submission. We will discuss how to most usefully structure and use this
session closer to the time.
Dabydeen, Turner
EDIT
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