3 - Doubleness and Silence in Adventure and Spy Fiction

Summary

Chapters Three, Four, Five and Six focus on the emergence of explicit maps as an integral element within popular genres and thus follow a rough chronology from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Chapter Three explores the map in Adventure Fiction as it emerges in the late nineteenth century at a point when literary maps proliferate across texts and genres. This chapter offers a detailed reading of two iconic maps in Treasure Island and King Solomon’s Mines and seeks to show that visual and verbal meanings are fully integrated. In the final sections of the chapter, the concept of doubling in map and text is taken to its furthest extreme and works to create a new genre – the spy thriller. This is analysed with reference to John Buchan and full analysis of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands. (139)