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?).

In person and simulcast.

Wednesdays | 6 monthly classes | 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
JAN 21: Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
FEB 18: Helen MacInnes, Above Suspicion
MAR 18: Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day
APR 01: John LeCarré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
MAY 06: Kate Atkinson, Transcription
JUN 10: Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana