The Return of the Edwardians in Contemporary Fiction

My research stems from the hypothesis that a subgenre exists within the contemporary historical novel in English with a series of features that can be labelled as neoEdwardian and belong in a broader social and cultural phenomenon. Thus, trough the analysis of a series of recent novels set in the years prior to the First World War, this dissertation could contribute to the study of the relationship that we establish with the past, especially when History and fiction interact in novels. The main goals of this research are: 1. To delve into the state of the art of contemporary historical fiction in English. 2. To trace the state of the art of the neo-Edwardian novel, including a chronology of primary works and their evolution. 3. To analyse a series of primary works that could be considered neo-Edwardian and to obtain some common features. 4. To investigate critical concepts about our contemporary views on the past that can be related to this subgenre. 5. To contribute to the study of the neo-historical novel. In order to achieve this, a thorough examination of a selection of contemporary novels set in the Edwardian period is being carried out. The theoretical framework employed revolves around memory in contemporary fiction and the evolution of the historical novel in the 20th and the 21st centuries.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Displaying Mr Selfridge

Whereas, in literature a stream of recent bio-fictions have focused their efforts on resurrecting great Edwardian authors, the first season of Mr Selfridge (2013), based on Lindy Woodhead’s biography Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge (2007), features a capitalist hero and constitutes an intriguing object of study which connects the present context with the history of England and of costume drama itself. Consequently, this paper will analyse the series in terms of how it relates to and differs from other representations of Edwardian characters, in an attempt to explore what the impulse lying behind Mr Selfridge’s filmic return could be.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Distinguishing neo-Edwardianism from neo-Victorianism

Ever since the 1930s, with Vita Sackville-West’s The Edwardians (1930), representations of the Edwardian period can be found in British fiction. However, those have evolved throughout the years, as neo-Edwardian novels seem to incorporate postmodern ideas and share more features with neo-Victorian fiction than with their rather conservative predecessors. Furthermore, some of these novels, in which the crucial parts of the action take place in the Edwardian era, start in the Victorian period. Aligned with current debates in historiography about periodization of the late nineteenth - early twentieth century, this paper aims to add a new point of view by analysing recent representations of the Edwardians in contemporary fiction through a close analysis of novels that could be called neo-Edwardian and show ways in which they collide with and differ from representations of the Victorians, as it is the case with Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George (2005) and Tracy Chevalier’s Falling Angels (2001) among others. In order to do so, it will be necessary to revisit Linda Hutcheon’s theories about postmodern historical fiction found in her Poetics of Postmodernism (1988) and reach recent critical trends like the ones appearing in Nicola Parsons and Kate Mitchell’s Reading Historical Fiction: The Revenant and Remembered Past (2013), which show an evolution away from historiographic metafiction. Also, the definition of neo-Victorianism provided by Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewelyn in Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2005 (2010) will be essential to articulate this paper. Out of this exploration, the question whether neo-Edwardian novels talk about the twentyfirst century in spite of their setting will arise too, re-opening the discussion on nostalgia initiated in the 1980s. As a result, it will be shown that, although the relationship between neo-Edwardian fiction and neo-Victorianism is close, the former can be interpreted as a different subgenre with quite an ambivalent attitude towards the past, ranging from nostalgia to an anti-nostalgic impulse.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Everybody has the Right to Improve: Proposing an Adaptation for 4th year of ESO Students with English as their L1 or L2

AbstractEven though in the last years the necessity to teach the official language(s) to foreign students has been widely studied in Spain, little attention has been paid to the way in which these students should be treated in the foreign language classroom. For instance, it seems that it is not necessary to teach English to students from Anglophone countries or where English is used daily in various contexts - both highly common on the Spanish coast. However, the present article shows that this belief could affect negatively their personal and academic development.Parting from a didactic intervention in a secondary school located in the area of Malaga, this article aims to show the needs of two students of 4th year of ESO from the United Kingdom and Belgium, for whom an adaptation of a didactic sequence revolving around the theme of work has been created. This adaptation does not only aim at improving some linguistic aspects, but also at developing other key competences and making them feel integrated in the classroom, becoming active subjects who are an essential component of it

Tracing the Edwardian Artist in Contemporary Fiction

This paper deals with different representations of artists from the beginning of the 20th century in recent fiction written in English.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech