"Beneath every history, another history:" History, Memory, and Nation in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies
| atmire.migration.oldid | 2994 | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Vandervlist, Harry | |
| dc.contributor.author | Baker, Theresa Rae | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2015-02-10T15:49:22Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2015-06-23T07:00:42Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2015-02-10 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2015 | en |
| dc.description.abstract | In the years since I began this degree, Hilary Mantel has risen from obscurity to ubiquity. The many years she has toiled away as author, reviewer, and journalist have left behind an impressive collection of novels, short stories, countless reviews, sharp-witted critiques on her society, and a memoir. In each piece of her writing, Mantel makes one thing clear: she is a political animal. In Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel uses historical fiction to call for a new perspective not only on the saintly Thomas More as a flawed, tragic hero, but also on Anne Boleyn as a tragic scapegoat, while at the same time laying the foundation for seeing Cromwell’s fall as that of another tragic hero, the victim of a nation that slips back into Medieval attitudes and practices, mirroring Mantel’s critique of her own nation’s similar slip into archaic attitudes and practices. Because of Mantel’s use of myth in these two novels, I begin with an examination of magic and myth in the British context, relying heavily on the work of Keith Thomas. In order to understand the nature of history and its interaction with historical fiction, I explore how history has evolved from occupying the genre of literature to becoming a social science then, following the arguments of Hayden White, becoming once again a close cousin of literature because of its narrative structure. After establishing the original framework for historical fiction first set out by Georg Lukács, I then go on to explore more recent analyses of historical fiction, including Ann Rigney and Mantel herself. In order to better understand how early Tudor England can be considered a nation, I examine the different approaches—from Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm to Liah Greenfeld and Philip S. Gorski—to what a nation is and the history of how the idea of nation has evolved. Moving on from the theoretical framework, I focus on the major tragic characters of Mantel’s Cromwell novels: Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas Cromwell. Because of Mantel’s frequent use of ekphrasis, I deem it necessary to discuss some of the key portraits featured within the pages of her novels. Distinguishing Anne Boleyn from More and Cromwell is the absence of a verifiable portrait of her image. My research will contribute to the relatively small amount of critical scholarship— a recent search of MLA International Bibliography (29 Oct. 2014) produces nineteen entries for Mantel but, for example, three hundred and sixty for Ian McEwan—performed on the work of an author clearly, as indicated by her back-to-back Man Booker Prize wins for the novels in this study, receiving critical praise from well-established reviewers. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Baker, T. R. (2015). "Beneath every history, another history:" History, Memory, and Nation in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25109 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/25109 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2102 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Graduate Studies | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Calgary | en |
| dc.publisher.place | Calgary | en |
| dc.rights | University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. | |
| dc.subject | Literature--English | |
| dc.subject.classification | Hilary | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Mantel | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Contemporary | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Fiction | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Historical | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Tudor | en_US |
| dc.subject.classification | Cromwell | en_US |
| dc.title | "Beneath every history, another history:" History, Memory, and Nation in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | English | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Calgary | |
| thesis.degree.name | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | |
| ucalgary.item.requestcopy | true |