We will read various narratives in which history (both cultural and personal) plays a part in shaping the course of fictional events. These are not conventional "historical" novels, (no swashbuckling heroes, or endlessly detailed battle scenes). Instead we will study some difficult and perplexing books, whose authors realize that the linkage between "history" and "truth" is often uncertain. This applies as well to attempts to capture individual "histories": biography, memoirs, autobiographical fiction. Thus questions of memory, repression, and narrative technique become relevant to our inquiry, especially when they intersect with larger political, societal and cultural issues. We will focus our attention on writing produced in Britain during the twentieth-century. Among the texts we will be reading are D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow, Katherine Mansfield's short stories, Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being and To the Lighthouse, Graham Swift's Waterland, and Ian McKuen's Atonement. In addition to active involvement in class discussions, students can expect to do some brief investigatory reports, a class presentation, an annotated bibliography, and a 15-20 page paper.