Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage
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Christopher Isherwood
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espionage motion pictures
espionage television series
femininity
gender identity
Helen MacInnes
masculinity
Nancy Mitford
national identity
queer representation
sexual identities
Spy and espionage fiction
spy motion pictures
spy television series
The Americans
The Little Drummer Girl
Product details
- ISBN 9781350271401
- Weight: 380g
- Dimensions: 154 x 232mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jun 2025
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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An exploration of how espionage narratives give access to cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality before and following the Second World War, this book moves away from masculinist assumptions of the genre to offer an integrative survey of the sexualities on display from important characters across spy fiction. Topics covered include how authors mocked the traditional spy genre; James Bond as a symbol of pervasive British Superiority still anxious about masculinity; how older female spies act as queer figures that disturb the masculine mythology of the secret agent; and how the clandestine lives of agents described ways to encode queer communities under threat from fascism. Covering texts such as the Bond novels, John Le Carré’s oeuvre (and their notable adaptations) and works by Helen MacInnes, Christopher Isherwood and Mick Herron, Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage takes stock of spy fiction written by women, female protagonists written by men, and probes the representations of masculinity generated by male authors. Offering a counterpoint to a genre traditionally viewed as male-centric, Sexuality and Gender in Fictions of Espionage proposes a revision of masculinity, femininity, queer identities and gendered concepts such as domesticity, and relates them to notions of nationality and the defence work conducted at crucial moments in history.
Ann Rea is Professor of English Literature at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, USA. She is co-editor of the Literary Texts and the Popular Marketplace series with Nick Hubble and she also edited the essay collection, Middlebrow Wodehouse in 2015.
