Cromwell, thoughtful (Mark Rylance)
Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn in the ending we all know (Claire Foy, 2015 Wolf Hall)
For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Ten Mondays, 11:45 to 1:15 pm,
September 25 to November 27
4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW. Washington DC
Dr Ellen Moody
Description of Course
In this course we’ll discuss 3 winners: Paul Scott’s Staying On (1979), Graham Swift’s Last Orders (1996) and Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009). We will explore our prize-obsessed culture, how the Booker functions in the fiction industry. The Booker is more than a marketplace niche, though. The books characteristically share a group of themes: historical, post-modern, post-colonial, self-reflexive, witty, melancholy books. Many are masterpieces. All three choices also have also been made into brilliant and successful films, and we’ll discuss film adaptations as well.
Required Texts (in the order we’ll read them):
Scott, Paul. Staying On. 1977; rpt. Chicago: University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-226-74349-7.
Swift, Graham. Last Orders. NY: Vintage, 1996. ISBN 978-0679-766629
Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall. NY: Picador [Henry Holt], 2009/10. ISBN 979-031242998/978-0-8050-8068-1
Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.
Sept 25: 1st week: The politics of selling good books: history of the Booker Prize; we begin with Paul Scott and Raj Quartet (aka The Jewel in the Crown)
Oct 2: 2nd week: Paul Scott’s Staying On; for next week read Weinbaum essay on Staying On, finish the novel if you can.
October 9: 3rd week: Staying On; film adaptation; clips from the film and discussion; for next week read first third of Last Orders.
October 16: 4th week: Graham Swift and full context for Last Orders
October 23: 5th week: Last Orders; clips from the film and discussion
October 30: 6th week: Last Orders and post-modernity; the figure of Thomas Cromwell; for next week begin Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.
November 6: 7th week: Hilary Mantel, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More
November 13: 8th week: Discussing Wolf Hall
November 20: 9th week: finishing Wolf Hall; mini-series; clips from film and discussion
November 27: 10th week: finish discuss all three books and movies final comments on prestigious prizes
From Fred Schepisi’s Last Orders (2004): Jack’s four friends (Ray Winston, David Hemminges, Bob Hoskins, Tim Courtney) on the pier, by the sea, and his wife, Amy (Helen Mirren) getting on the bus
Suggested supplementary reading & films,audio reading:
Bannerjee, Jacqueline. Paul Scott. Plymouth: Northcote, 1999
Carley, James. Review of Eric Ives’s The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, “That woman again.” Spectator 31 July 2004: 30.
Chotiner, Isaac. “Revisiting the Raj,” The New York Times Book Review. September 10, 2017,p. 13
Cooper, Pamela. Graham Swift’s Last Orders. NY: Continuum, 2002
English, James. “Winning the Culture Game: Prizes, Awards, and the Rules of Art,” New Literary History, 33:1 (Winter, 2002):109-135.
Hopkinson, Natalie. “The Booker Prize’s Bad History,” The New York Times, October 17, 2017. Online.
Last Orders. Dir and Screenplay. Fred Schepisi. With Helen Mirren, Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine … Sony, 2004.
Moseley, Merritt. “Britain’s Booker Prize,” The Sewanee Review, 101:4 (1993):613-22.
Last Orders. Unabridged text read aloud by Gigi Marceau Clarke. High Audio Books, 2003.
Nussbaum, Emily, “Queens Boulevard” Paths to Power: Wolf Hall and Casual Vacancy,” New Yorker, May 4 2015
Showalter, Elaine. “Coming to Blows over the Booker,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 48 (June 2002):42
The Jewel in the Crown Dr and screenplay Christopher Morahan and Ken Tayler and Irene Shubik. With Peggy Ashcroft, Geraldine James, At Malik, Tim Piggot-Smith, Judy Parfitt, Eric Porter, Nicholas Farrell. Granada TV, 1984.
Staying On. Dir and Screenplay Silvio Narizzano and Julian Michell. With Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Saeed Jaffrey, Pearl Padamsee. Granada TV, 1980.
Loades, David. The Boleyns: The Rise and Fall of a Tudor Family. Gloucester: Amberley Press, 2011.
O’Tooler, Fintan. “The Explosions from Wolf Hall,” New York Review of Books, Mary 21, 2014. [On the novel, mini-series and stage-play].
Rao, K. Bhaskara. Paul Scott. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
Robertson, Mary. “The Art of the Possible: Thomas Cromwell’s Management of West Country Government,” The Historical Journal, 32:4 (1989):793-816.
Schofield, John. The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell: Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant. Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2008.
Simon, Linda, “To Write Myself into Being’: A Profile of Hilary Mantel,” The World and I, 19:4 (2004):245ff.
Spurling, Hilary. Paul Scott: A Life of the Author of the Raj Quartet. NY: Norton, 1990.
Strongman, Luke. The Booker Prize and the Legacy of Empire. Netherlands: Rodopi, 2002.
Suneetha, P. “Homo Homini Lupus: A Note on Wolf Hall,” Journal of English Studies, 5:3 (2010): 45-53.
Sutherland, J. A. Fiction and the Fiction Industry. London: Athlone Press, 1978.
Todd, Richard. Consuming Fictions: The Booker Prize and Fiction in Britain Today. London: Bloomsbury, 1996.
Wolf Hall. Unabridged text read aloud on CDs by Simon Slater. Macmillan Audio. 2009.
Weinbaum, Francine. “Staying on after the Raj,” Journal of South Asian Literature, 17:1 (1982):225-29.
Wolf Hall. Dir and Screenplay Peter Kosminsky and Peter Straughn. With Mark Rylance, Damien Lewis, Claire Foy, Anton Lesser, Charity Wakefield, David Robb, Saskia Reeves. BBC TV, 2015.
Tusker and Lucy Smalley (Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, 1980 Staying On)
Ellen
On October 18, 2017 I was able to send this to the class too:
Dear Class,
I know I said that the Booker Brothers started the prize to give their firm a respectable place in the world, to compensate for hideous behavior in the sugar industry in Africa, but I didn’t say much more than that because I didn’t have the full details — some of them appear in Consuming Fiction, but not much. Yesterday the New York Times published the first detailed account I’ve seen on the business of sugar insofar as it was carried on by the Booker Brothers by Natalie Hopkinson.
http://tinyurl.com/yany5bzb
The horrible history is not over as you see in the condition of Guyana today: I also mentioned that Berger blasted the prize when he was awarded it, and gave what was called “a fiery speech;” I did not know the specific content until now. it is no wonder that post-colonial books, books rightly critical of colonialist policies have dominated the choices of the Booker until very recently.
Here you can see that the Man Group is an outgrowth of the original sugar company:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Group
It is under their marketing influence that the prize now includes the US, which, as I suggested, will probably change the characteristics of these books. I describe these characteristics in the last quarter of this Sylvia blog:
https://austenreveries.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/how-to-avoid-the-long-arm-of-rotoronusingalongspoonthebookerprize/
I’ll add the URL to this essay to our syllabus so anyone wanting to read the piece can reach it from there. here is the long URl in case you have any trouble reaching the piece through the tiny URL system:
Ellen
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