230009 Bring Up the Booker: Hilary Mantel's Cromwell Novels (S) (WiSe 2013/2014)

After thirty years of writing critically acclaimed but commercially not very successful novels, Hilary Mantel won a Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall in 2009 and again one for Bring Up the Bodies in 2012; the first two novels in a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, politician at the court of King Henry VIII. We will discuss these two novels and place them in their contexts of genre (historical fiction), intertextuality (e.g. Philippa Gregory's novels about Tudor England), history (Henrician England; the Protestant Reformation) and today's book market (e.g. the issue of literary prizes).
Addendum: In February 2013, Mantel stepped into the tabloids' crossfire by analysing the role and function of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, as a birthing machine: "Royal Bodies", at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies. This speech - and the ensueing media controversy - will also be subject to seminar discussion.

Literaturangaben

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, HarperCollins (2009)
and Bring Up the Bodies; HarperCollins (2012)
"Royal Bodies", London Review of Books 21 Feb. 2013: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies