The Neutral Ground: The Andre Affair and the Background of Cooper's The Spy
By (Author) Bruce A. Rosenberg
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Praeger Publishers Inc
30th October 1994
United States
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900
Literary studies: general
813.2
Hardback
168
Width 140mm, Height 210mm
340g
John Andre was captured in September 1780, outside British lines, and was hanged as a spy. Forty years later, he was still so highly regarded that, in 1821, his body was exhumed and reburied in the Heroes' Corner of Westminster Abbey. This book argues that James Fenimore Cooper's second novel, The Spy, is an examination of the nature and character of clandestinity in which the author investigates the morality of deceit and disguised intentions in normal life as well as in wartime by using the Andre affair as background. A century later, The Spy was undiscovered by British spy novelists. The publication date of The Spy (1821--the year of Andre's reinterment) further suggests that this affair is really the impetus for Cooper's examination of the nature of spying. Cooper is usually acknowledged as the originator of the Western; one of the assertions of this book is that he is also the first spy novelist.
.,."is clearly and often engagingly written. It will make Cooper's work more accessible to those who are studying it, and The Neutral Ground belongs in academic libraries supporting studies in Cooper in particular and in the early nineteenth century novel in general."-Academic Library Book Review
...is clearly and often engagingly written. It will make Cooper's work more accessible to those who are studying it, and The Neutral Ground belongs in academic libraries supporting studies in Cooper in particular and in the early nineteenth century novel in general.-Academic Library Book Review
..."is clearly and often engagingly written. It will make Cooper's work more accessible to those who are studying it, and The Neutral Ground belongs in academic libraries supporting studies in Cooper in particular and in the early nineteenth century novel in general."-Academic Library Book Review
BRUCE A. ROSENBERG is currently Professor of American Civilization at Brown University. He is the author of numerous books on American culture, among them Folklore and Literature (1991), The Code of the West (1982) ster and the Epic Defeat (1974) and The Art of the American Folk Preacher (winner of the James Russell Lowell Prize, 1970). He is also co-author of Ian Fleming (1989) and The Spy Story (1987).