63 pages • 2-hour read
My Oxford Year: A Novel
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Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.
Physical Context: Oxford
Oxford is a city in Oxfordshire, England, but Oxford also refers to the University of Oxford, which is the oldest English-speaking university in the world. The city was founded in the eighth century, and it is located on two rivers, the Thames and the Cherwell. As Jamie explains in My Oxford Year, the name of the city refers to “fording,” or crossing the river, with “oxen,” making the Old English name Oxenaforda, or Oxenford. Robert D’Oyly built Oxford Castle after the Norman Conquest in 1066. Teaching at the university began soon after 1066, though the town and university were often at odds, which led some scholars to leave and create Cambridge University. Oxford, as a religious city, was heavily impacted by the English Reformation and the creation of the Anglican Church. In 1556, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was executed in the city, and Ella notes the location of this execution as she walks over it. Oxford officially became a city in 1542, and it served as Charles I’s capital from 1642 to 1646.
The University of Oxford is considered one of the best and most prestigious universities in the world, bringing in staff and students from around the globe. Oxford as the setting for My Oxford Year combines the history and prestige of the university with the dilemma of the protagonist, Ella. Ella is torn between her current career path as a political consultant and her dream of going to Oxford. The history and elevation of Oxford, for Ella, is more than just a boost to her resume. She is consistently shocked by the age and importance of the locations she visits in Oxford. In part, the inclusion of architectural, historical, and cultural details highlight Ella as an outsider in Oxford, as she often notes how other people are not awestruck by the history and culture of the city and university.
Genre Context: Travel, Romance, and Sick Lit
My Oxford Year combines three main genres and sub-genres of literature: travel literature, romance, and sick lit. Regarding the plot of the novel, it is primarily a romance, since the focus of the story is Ella’s romance with Jamie. As with most romances, their relationship begins, experiences complications, and endures romantically. As such, the subgenres of travel literature and sick lit serve as influences on the details, developments, and resolution of Ella and Jamie’s romance, not the predominant focus of the work.
Travel literature is a longstanding genre in English literature and classics, experiencing a boom in the 18th century, as the English empire expanded and allowed more English people to travel around the world. Travel literature often focuses on analyzing other cultures; noting specific architecture, events, and cultural landmarks; and explaining these details to the reader like a tour guide. In My Oxford Year, the details of Oxford and the university highlight Ella’s distance from Oxonian culture, but they also add a dimension of interest for readers. As with most travel literature, part of the premise of this subgenre is to intrigue readers with interesting details and information about a foreign location.
Sick lit is often considered a subgenre of romance, though it also overlaps with young adult fiction and contemporary drama. Sick lit is a sub-genre that uses illness, death, loss, and grief as dominant themes and elements in the work to emphasize or highlight the main messages and purpose of the text. Notable examples of sick lit include The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole, and A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks. The illness typically creates both urgency and limitation, forcing characters to confront questions of meaning, love, and mortality in compressed timeframes.
At the same time, sick lit has faced criticism for reducing people with illnesses to narrative devices, turning their suffering into a catalyst for another character’s growth. Authors within the genre have attempted to respond to this critique. John Green, for example, wrote The Fault in Our Stars to resist the tendency to objectify sick characters and instead give them interiority, humor, and agency. In My Oxford Year, Jamie’s multiple myeloma functions in both ways: It undeniably raises the tension and urgency of his romance with Ella, yet it also drives Ella’s transformation as much as it defines his own experience.
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