SECRET. Spies in European Culture between Reality and Tales (1815-1914)

SECRET aims to reconstruct the historical profile, representations and perceptions surrounding the figure of the spy in Europe between 1815 and 1914. While current events permit the constant existence of an opaque level of domestic and international politics, the spy genre persistently features as one of the most successful in the context of literature, cinema and Tv serials. Be this as it may, the genesis both of contemporary espionage and of the cultural imaginary (literary, iconographic, theatrical, cinematographic) associated with it has not hitherto been the object of a specific study. The present project is designed to investigate the founding moment of espionage and the use of secrecy in politics in the contemporary age. Our underlying hypothesis is that the century in question saw the development of a cultural-historical process in which disruptive novelties in the field of dissimulation, the secret and the double simultaneously assailed the spheres of the state, the self and the imaginary, engendering distinctive features of contemporary society. The only way to reconstruct this global process, in which state and society, but also reality and fiction, were profoundly intertwined, is by means of a transdisciplinary analysis, that considers the politico-institutional and the cultural planes. The research will focus on the “circuit of the secret” between state, actors and spectators; the character of the spy, with a particular attention to the double identity, the role of women, the process of heroicisation; the spy tales in fictional works and in informers’ writing. The project is expected to provide a new, trans-disciplinary methodology and open a research field aimed at a global analysis of espionage in the contemporary age. SECRET will also offer valuable tools for understanding today’s democratic societies, as the transparency / secrecy dialectic in politics addresses security issues and remains crucial for the rulers-ruled relationship.