Stories of the Past: Viewing History Through Fiction
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Stories Of The Past: Viewing History Through Fiction Item Type Thesis or dissertation Authors Green, Christopher Citation Green, C. (2020). Stories Of The Past: Viewing History Through Fiction (Doctoral dissertation). University of Chester, UK. Publisher University of Chester Rights Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Download date 04/10/2021 08:03:20 Item License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10034/623069 STORIES OF THE PAST: VIEWING HISTORY THROUGH FICTION Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Chester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Christopher William Green January 2020 Frontispiece: Illustration from the initial serialisation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D'Urbervilles.1 1 Thomas Hardy, 'Tess of the D’Urbervilles', The Graphic, August 29th, 1891. ii The material being presented for examination is my own work and has not been submitted for an award of this or another HEI except in minor particulars which are explicitly noted in the body of the thesis. Where research pertaining to the thesis was undertaken collaboratively, the nature and extent of my individual contribution has been made explicit. iii iv Abstract This thesis investigates how effective works of fiction are, through their depictions of past worlds, in providing us with a resource for the study of the history of the period in which that fiction is set. It assesses past academic literature on the role of fiction in historical understanding, and on the processes involved in the writing, reading, adapting, and interpreting of fiction. It contends that the creation and consumption of fiction has not been looked at in a holistic way in terms of an overall process that takes us from author to consumer with all of the potential intermediate steps. The thesis proposes and describes such a process model, each step within which contains a number of key elements, namely actors, actions, influences, artefacts, and finally the real and imagined worlds of the fiction. It begins with the author, who through actions of perception and adaptation, and affected by various external influences, social, political, and aesthetic, mediates with elements of his or her contemporary world and incorporates them into the imagined world of the initial artefact, the novel. It describes how at each stage in the process other actors (critics, adapters and curators) engage with previous artefacts such as the novel and previous adaptations, and their own set of influences, and through actions of reception, adaptation and interpretation create further artefacts such as critical reviews, adaptations and tourist interpretations that comprise further imagined worlds that can be compared to the author’s original imagined world, and by extension, the original past world. Using a number of case studies of English novels of the period from 1800 to 1930, the thesis assesses what the practical evidence of the process in action tells us about the ability of a novel to act as an adjunct to contemporary records in providing insights into that original real world. These studies incorporate analysis of the novels themselves, and of subsequent artefacts such as film and television adaptations, curated literary places and guidebooks, and both professional and lay reviews. The thesis concludes that fiction in its various forms, and especially in its adapted and interpreted forms, whilst not a pure historical document as such, has the ability to provide us with a vivid perception of a past world. It contends that the process model could be used as an aid in the teaching of History or English Literature, or as an aid to the general consumer of fiction, to help remove the layers of imagined worlds that potentially lie between us and a past historical world, thereby reducing the ability of that layering to create a misleading view of history. v Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr James Pardoe, my primary supervisor, for all his help through the period of this research. His comments were always pertinent and constructive, keeping me on the straight and narrow whenever I was tempted to indulge in flights of fancy, whilst always allowing time in our meetings to discuss the latest, usually contrasting, fortunes of Shrewsbury Town and Chester FC. Thanks also to Prof Howard Williams, my secondary supervisor, and to Dr Melissa Fegan for their invaluable advice at a critical time in the development process. I am also indebted to Prof Peter Gaunt who guided me when I took my first tentative steps in the field of academic research with my MA dissertation fifteen years ago. Thanks are due to the staff at the University of Chester Department of History and Archaeology, the University of Chester Library, the J.B. Priestley Archive at the University of Bradford, the Alan Plater Archive at Hull History Centre, Dorset County Museum, the National Science and Media Museum, and the Cheshire Record Office for providing helpful assistance when required. Thanks are also due to the staff at the many literary sites I visited during the course of my research, particularly those at the Elizabeth Gaskell House, the Jane Austen’s House Museum, Hardy’s Cottage, Max Gate, the Brontë Parsonage, the Charles Dickens Museum, and also to the random individual who kindly directed me to J.B. Priestley’s boyhood home in Manningham when I looked lost. I would obviously also like to thank the many novelists, adapters and curators who have painted such vivid pictures of the past within their work. Much of what I describe below I either read, watched or visited for the first time as research for this thesis, and the experience has been thoroughly enjoyable and, as befits the subject matter of the thesis, enlightening. The six years that this research has taken have been personally difficult for me, as during that time I have lost both my father and mother, and my eldest brother. Each have inspired me in their own way: my father for showing me that knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a worthy aspiration; my mother for giving me the stubborn streak that helped me push the research through to completion; and my brother for helping me appreciate the power of music, art and literature in transforming our understanding of the world. This thesis is therefore dedicated, with love, to Rex, Beryl and Richard Green. vi Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Stories of the Past .......................................................................................... 1 1.2 Literature Review: History and Fiction ......................................................... 3 1.3 Beyond the Novel ........................................................................................ 15 1.4 Thesis Aims ................................................................................................. 17 1.5 Thesis Parameters and Limitations .............................................................. 19 1.6 Thesis Methodology and Sources ................................................................ 23 1.7 Thesis Structure ........................................................................................... 30 2 The Literary Tourism Process ............................................................................ 34 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 34 2.2 Thomas Hardy – Wessex and Dorset .......................................................... 38 2.3 Jane Austen – Interpretation through Association ....................................... 56 2.4 Conclusion: Literary Tourism and the Classic Fiction Process Model ....... 67 3 The Adaptation Process ...................................................................................... 73 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 73 3.2 The ‘Classic’ Novel Canon and Film and TV adaptations .......................... 83 3.3 Far from the Madding Crowd – Recreating Wessex ................................... 94 3.4 North and South – Consumer Perceptions of Milton ................................ 109 3.5 Conclusion: Adaptation and the Classic Fiction Process Model ............... 113 4 The Critical Process .......................................................................................... 121 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 121 4.2 Thomas Hardy and the London Critics ...................................................... 126 4.3 Elizabeth Gaskell and William Rathbone Greg ......................................... 147 4.4 Conclusion: Criticism and the Classic Fiction Process Model .................. 158 5 The Writing Process ......................................................................................... 165 5.1 Introduction ............................................................................................... 165 5.2 Jane Austen and Hampshire ...................................................................... 174 5.3 Elizabeth Gaskell and Manchester ............................................................ 193 5.4 Conclusion: Writing and the Classic Fiction Process Model .................... 215 vii 6 J.B. Priestley’s The Good Companions – Discerning History .......................... 219 6.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................