From James Bond to George Smiley, spies lurk around every corner in the twentieth-century British novel. This course will explore spy fiction as a means of examining not only the popularity and endurance of the genre but also the historical, political, and cultural import of espionage in modern Britain. Beyond allowing us insight into their historical moment, spy fictions also raise questions about genre (what makes a novel “spy fiction” versus, say, “detective fiction”); gender (why is the spy novel typically the domain of male authors, and what do spy novels written by women look like); mass culture (how do popular, middle-brow, or low-brow genres engage with the avant-garde and the intellectual); and narrative technique (what do we “know” in a spy novel? Can we ever really know anything?). Titles will include Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent; Helen MacInnes, Above Suspicion; Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day; John LeCarré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; Kate Atkinson, Transcription; and Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana.

Wednesdays | 6 monthly classes: January 21, February 18, March 18, April 1, May 6, and June 10 | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
In person and simulcast