Undergraduate Course: Spies and Spooks (LLLG07075)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 7 (Year 1 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | THIS IS A FOR-CREDIT COURSE OFFERED BY THE OFFICE FOR LIFELONG LEARNING (OLL); ONLY STUDENTS REGISTERED WITH OLL SHOULD BE ENROLLED.
This course explores the fiction of espionage and intelligence from World War One to the Cold War, from the gentlemanly world of Sherlock Holmes to the glamorous adventures of James Bond and the more threatening realities of Smiley's 'Circus'. We will consider how writers such as Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, W. Somerset Maugham, Ian Fleming and John le Carré, many former intelligence agents themselves, reflected on national identity, reinvented the figure of the hero and, as the British empire crumbled, reconsidered political ideologies and power dynamics on the global stage. Topics explored will include the gendering of espionage, representations of masculinity in the post- and cold war periods, and the development of the genre and its shifting conventions. |
| Course description |
Week 1: Introduction: Coming out of the shadows . . . the emergence of espionage literature.
Week 2: Arthur Conan Doyle: 'His Last Bow' (1917)
Week 3: Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent (1907)
Week 4: John Buchan: The Thirty-Nine Steps (1917)
Week 5: Somerset Maugham: Ashenden, or, the British Agent (1928)
Week 6: Eric Ambler: Epitaph for a Spy (1938)
Week 7: Helen MacInnes: Above Suspicion (1941)
Week 8: Graham Greene: Our Man in Havana (1958)
Week 9: Ian Fleming: Thunderball (1961)
Week 10: John Le Carre: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963)
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course students should be able to:
* discuss and analyse prose fiction with confidence
* demonstrate an understanding of the development of the spy fiction genre
* demonstrate an awareness of how literary works can articulate and explore ideological questions.
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Reading List
Essential
Ambler, Eric. 2009. Epitaph for a Spy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Buchan, John. 1993. The Thirty-Nine Steps. London: Wordsworth Classics.
Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2006. His Last Bow. London: Headline.
Conrad, Joseph. 2007. The Secret Agent. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Fleming, Ian. 2012. Thunderball. London: Vintage Classics.
Greene, Graham. 2001. Our Man in Havana. London: Vintage Classics.
Le Carre, John. 2010.The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
MacInnes, Helen. 2012. Above Suspicion. London: Titan.
Somerset Maugham. 2010. Ashenden, or, the British Agent. London: Vintage Classics.
Recommended
Black. Jeremy. 2005. The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
Cobbs, John L. 1997. Understanding John Le Carre. Greensboro: University of South Carolina Press.
Denning, Michael. 1987. Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller. London: Routledge.
Goodman, Sam. 2015. British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire. London: Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature.
Panek, E. 1981. Special Branch the British Spy: The British Spy Novel, 1890-1980 London: Bowling Green University Popular Press.
Snyder, R. L. 2011. The Art of Indirection in British Espionage Fiction: A Critical Study of Six Novelists. London: MacFarland & Co. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
* Critical analysis
* Group discussion
* Close reading skills |
| Special Arrangements |
None |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Anya Clayworth
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Sabine Murdoch
Tel: (0131 6)51 1855
Email: |
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