Event overview
Goldsmiths Literature Seminar
Sam Goodman (University of Exeter)
London matters in espionage fiction. Spy fiction is typically concerned with the representation of urban environments and scenes of a rural nature are rare. Spies often operate exclusively within city space, indicative of the city’s status as a centre of intrigue and as an arena for clandestine activity. It is the designation of the city as a centre for control that secures its place in espionage fiction and demands its continued defence. Spies often refer to their allegiances being to 'London' or 'Moscow'; the city acting as a metonymic signifier of sovereign authority. However, the fixity with which spies refer to the city belies its notional and constructed composition; the Second World War and the period of urban redevelopment that followed illustrating how nothing in the city is ever permanent or inviolable.
This paper will argue two main points by approaching the differing representations of cityscapes in the novels of Ian Fleming and John le Carré as both place, in terms of historical contextual detail relevant to the period in question, and as space, with regards to its production and mediation by forces of organisation and power. Firstly, I will argue that whilst cities are commonly identified in spy fiction as exemplary spaces of national identity they are in fact aberrant to typical national experience and continuously undergoing change. Secondly, I will illustrate that the city space in espionage fiction is subject to a paradox whereby the centre of sovereign power, seemingly the most secure part of the nation, is revealed as unstable, disharmonious and uncontrollable. Far from a fixed signifier of national identity and authority, I will argue that the city in spy fiction is a fractured space compounded by uncertainty and competing subjectivities.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Mar 2012 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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