This course explores the relationship between literature and history. It takes Shakespeare's plays about the history of England (especially the so-called Henriad) as its primary objects of study, but will also compare them with some other plays and epic poems written in the time of Shakespeare (by Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, and others). We will examine how these works participated in the construction of an official English national history sponsored by the monarchy, and also explore in what ways they were able to be critical of official (propagandistic) narratives of national history. In the final part of the course, we will study a more recent historical novel, historical short fiction collection, or documentary poetry volume (possibilities include George Eliot's Romola, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, John Keene's Counternarratives, and Muriel Rukeyser's Book of the Dead) and some recent historical films (possibilities include Lucretia Martel's Zama and Jonathan Glazer's Zone of Interest). Motivating questions for the course include: How does literature represent history and historical experience? How does it offer readers a feeling of and for the past? What is the relationship between the development of realism in literature and the representation of historical events in various media--the play, the long poem, the novel, the short story, and film? How does the long history of representing history as fiction bear on our contemporary concerns with propaganda, documentary, and social media?