‘Reimagining a Lace Town’ explores the potential of extant oral histories as
an inspiration for fiction. It falls into two parts: a novel ‘The Queen of the
Midlands’; and a critical thesis which explores how a writer can draw on an
archive of oral testimonies to create a fictional world.
‘The Queen of the Midlands’ is set against the historical backdrop of the East
Midlands machine-made lace industry. It reimagines a lace town inhabited by
two fictitious female lace workers and tells their overlapping stories at three
separate and distinct points in their lives: as children and sworn enemies; as
young women who forge a truce; and as elderly women who have become
firm friends. The novel explores their relationship and shines a light on the
machine-made lace industry that shaped their lives. It employs historical,
regional and industrial detail gleaned from an archive of oral histories. It
draws on the nature of the oral history interview to inform its three-part
structure. It uses anecdotes, descriptive language and storytelling techniques
found in the archive to inspire the reimagining of a lace town.
The critical component considers the heritage of East Midlands machine-made
lace. It discusses how my own personal connections with this heritage
and geography seep into the novel’s creation. It goes on to consider my
practice-based research as an interdisciplinary practice, embracing oral
history theory and the work of other East Midlands novelists. It examines the
listening process and the transformation of spoken text into prose fiction. It
considers the ethical implications of this work and the potential of oral history
as an interdisciplinary field for creative practitioners to engage with.
| Date of Award | 30 Jul 2019 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - University Of Strathclyde
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| Sponsors | University of Strathclyde |
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| Supervisor | Elspeth Jajdelska (Supervisor) & Arthur McIvor (Supervisor) |
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