Parkes, Adam
MWF 1 :50 PM
Park Hall 136
Reading authors from Buchan to Le Carré, this class will trace the development of a distinctively modern fictional genre in its literary and historical contexts from late-Victorian imperialism to the Cold War. Our primary focus will be fixed on British writers and the ways in which they represent espionage in Britain and Europe. As well as studying a number of primary texts, we will read in the history of spy fiction and espionage. We will think about what spying and fiction have to do with each other. We will also consider how spy fiction emerges from various popular genres during and after the modernist period in literature and the arts. Other topics of discussion will include: espionage and empire; the world wars and the Cold War; ideological conflict and nation-states; nationality and identity in the modern surveillance state; spies in literature, popular cinema, and television.
Some or all of the following works will feature on the syllabus: Eric Ambler, Epitaph for a Spy; Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day; John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps; Len Deighton, The Ipcress File; Ian Fleming, Casino Royale; George Orwell, 1984; John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Helen McInnes, Above Suspicion.