الفهرس 
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Abstract
Chapter one is devoted to discussing the historical novel genre: its definition, development through ages, and its structural features. Furthermore, it tackles the original framework for historical fiction first set out by Georg Lukács. Then, it explores more recent analyses of historical fiction, including Avrom Fleishman, A.S. Byatt, Diana Wallace, and Mantel herself. Chapter two discusses new historicism with a special reference to Greenblatt’s. The aim of this chapter is to
present the basic principles of new historicism through discussing the operations of power: subversion and containment. Moreover, it explores the
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meanings of ”the historicity of texts” and ”the textuality of history” that emphasize the bilateral relationship between the history and the text.
Moving on from the theoretical framework, chapter three is devoted to analyzing Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies in the light of the characteristics of historical novels. Moreover, it discusses the different images of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas More, and Anne Boleyn. In the already-known history, Thomas Cromwell was just a nobody, such as in the Shakespearean play Henry VIII. But in Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, he strides from periphery to center and comes on stage as a key-man. In Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, Thomas More is not an innocent sheep amongst the wolves, but a wolf himself as well. Mantel suggests that Anne Boleyn is a prominent female figure in England’s rise to the world of power. She has an ambitious agenda, one that is not taken up by critics. She tried to do this within the boundaries of history: renegotiating the past based on the same historical accounts used as evidence for the ’standardized’ version of events. In these two novels, Mantel explores these characters by reversing the sentiment that is generally attached to them. Mantel tries to negotiate the different viewpoints into a storyline in which no-one is completely innocent nor evil.
Chapter four is also an analysis of Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, but this time from the perspective of new historicism. It mainly implements the historicity of texts and the textuality of history along with functions of subversion and containment to analyze the text. Mantel said in an interview, that in Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies, she attempts to clarify the operation of power, the means of gaining power and the gain and loss of power itself through Cromwell, a low-born man’s story of how to get great power in court successfully. She tries to prove that ”beneath every history, another history” (Mantel, 2009). Therefore, the present thesis interprets the operations of power in Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies. Moreover, from the perspective of new historicism’s literary function, this chapter discusses
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the close interrelationship between the text, the writer and the social background. It discusses how the historical background of the novels has a close correlation to the historical context of the Tudor Dynasty.
To conclude, this thesis makes an effort to analyze Wolf Hall and Bring Up by emphasizing the relationship between history and these novels. The aim of this thesis is to provide readers with a broader and more comprehensive view of the author Hilary Mantel, and her creations. Wolf hall and Bring up the Bodies are historical novels that attempt to set new standards for historical novel writing. These novels show not only the Tudor Monarchy, but also the complexity of life in the past and the present. The conclusion pinpoints how history and literature affect each other, and that subversion and containment exist at the same time.