Bond books for my dissertation...
FelixLeiter ♀
Staffordshire or a pubPosts: 1,286MI6 Agent
Hi guys.
My final year at university is looming but before I enter the big wide world I have to write 10,000 words on some books. I am studying English Literature and have to submit a dissertation outline next week. It doesn't have to be much, just enough rough details so that the university are convinced I have an idea and will be able to write about it.
I really didn't have a clue at all what I would end up writing it on until I read John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold last year. I loved it, partly because I found it in a lot of ways to be so different to the Fleming Bond novels I had read. Consequently, I want to do my dissertation on a comparison of Le Carre's and Fleming's depictions of espionage, looking at their depictions of both the British agents and the foreign ones, maybe specifically their representations of communists.
Now the thing is it has been a few years since I read Fleming's books and though I plan to re-read several over the summer, my dissertation outline is in for the end of next week.
Can any of you help me in choosing which books would be best to use as a comparison with The Spy..., as well as possibly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? I am considering also putting Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana into the mix, but worry it might be a bit too much and won't fit in as well.
Finally, if any of you are aware of any critical books that compare the writers' novels, that would be great too
My final year at university is looming but before I enter the big wide world I have to write 10,000 words on some books. I am studying English Literature and have to submit a dissertation outline next week. It doesn't have to be much, just enough rough details so that the university are convinced I have an idea and will be able to write about it.
I really didn't have a clue at all what I would end up writing it on until I read John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold last year. I loved it, partly because I found it in a lot of ways to be so different to the Fleming Bond novels I had read. Consequently, I want to do my dissertation on a comparison of Le Carre's and Fleming's depictions of espionage, looking at their depictions of both the British agents and the foreign ones, maybe specifically their representations of communists.
Now the thing is it has been a few years since I read Fleming's books and though I plan to re-read several over the summer, my dissertation outline is in for the end of next week.
Can any of you help me in choosing which books would be best to use as a comparison with The Spy..., as well as possibly Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy? I am considering also putting Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana into the mix, but worry it might be a bit too much and won't fit in as well.
Finally, if any of you are aware of any critical books that compare the writers' novels, that would be great too
Relax darling, I'm on top of the situation -{
Comments
I think that CR and FRWL are the only Fleming books to really focus on espionage in any meaningful sense, in as much as they pit MI6 directly against the USSR. They'd probably be the best ones to start with.
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19- TWINE. 20- AVTAK. 21- MR. 22- DAF. 23- DAD.
Jeremy Black's The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen references LeCarre a few times but it's all very brief and looking at the index, LeCarre pops up in only 5 pages. There's even less mention about LeCarre within 3 pages (but at least something in passing) in Ian Fleming & James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007, edited by Edward Comentale, et. al. Then there's mention of him in only one page from Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by Andrew Lycett.
Good luck with the dissertation - it sounds fun.
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