The Neutral Ground: The Andre Affair and the Background of Cooper's The Spy

by Bruce A. Rosenberg

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313293191
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/30/1994
Series:	Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture , #42
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.44(d)
Lexile:	1200L (what's this?)

About the Author

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).

Table of Contents

Major André
Hanging Is for Spies
The Gentleman's Code
The Blackest Treason
A Gentleman's Education
The Arnold Enlistment
This Is a Spy!
Posthumous Encomia
James Fenimore Cooper
The André Affair and The Spy
André and Cooper
Cooper and the Spy Novel
The McDonald Papers
The Neutral Ground
The Spy
An American Novel
Dramatis Personae
The Neutral Ground
References
Index