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Intrigue: Espionage and Culture

Online ISBN:
9780300148480
Print ISBN:
9780300104981
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Book

Intrigue: Espionage and Culture

Published:
11 March 2005
Online ISBN:
9780300148480
Print ISBN:
9780300104981
Publisher:
Yale University Press

Abstract

Why do spies have such cachet in the twentieth century? Why do they keep reinventing themselves? What do they mean in a political process? This book examines the tradition of the spy narrative from its inception in the late nineteenth century through the present day. Ranging from John le Carré's bestsellers to Elizabeth Bowen's novels, from James Bond to John Banville's contemporary narratives, this book sets the historical contexts of these fictions: the Cambridge spy ring; the Profumo Affair; the witch-hunts against gay men in the civil service and diplomatic corps in the 1950s. Instead of focusing on the formulaic nature of the genre, the book emphasizes the responsiveness of spy stories to particular historical contingencies. The book begins by offering a systematic theory of the conventions and attractions of espionage fiction and then examines the British and Irish tradition of spy novels. A final section considers the particular form that American spy narratives have taken as they have cross-fertilized with the tradition of American romance in works such as Joan Didion's Democracy and John Barth's Sabbatical.

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