- Title
- Deviance and disloyalty: historiographical discourses in representations of the Cambridge spies
- Creator
- Garner, James John
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2003
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
- Description
- This thesis examines dramatic treatments of the lives of the Cambridge spies (Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt) with particular reference to the construction of a nexus between loyalty and sexuality. The queer/traitor metonym is also traced in journalistic and biographical works concerning the same characters. It is argued that this nexus arises from more general myths and archetypes of the hidden sterile alien; that its late-twentieth-century form draws its historical context from Cold War paranoia; that historical dramas made for mass audiences have been a central conduit for conveying the metonym as historical truth; and that treatments of the Cambridge spies are a principal site for studying the use of this pairing, or its exposure and denial. The authors of the prose and dramatic texts are examined with respect to their view of absolutist or relativist historiography and the concept of the ‘true’ story. Their use of particular paradigms of sexuality are also investigated, along with concepts of the ‘closet’, of Englishness, and the relationship of class and education to both sexuality and treason. Genre-related influences, such as those of television and of biography, are also taken into consideration. The role of journalists as historians is questioned, and their relationship with the government is used as an example of problematic historiography. For each of the principal playwrights (John Osborne, Hugh Whitemore, Hugh Conner, Robin Chapman, Julian Mitchell, Ian Curteis and Alan Bennett) the central task is to show how the queer/traitor nexus is either covertly confirmed or directly examined and criticized in their plays, and to consider the role of this nexus in homophobic aspects of the writing of history.
- Subject
- historiography; homophobia; drama; Cambridge spies; espionage; treason
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/936746
- Identifier
- uon:12393
- Rights
- Copyright 2003 James John Garner
- Language
- eng
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