ABSTRACT
The War of Independence seems to be a natural subject for an agency-based analysis of its representation for several reasons. It is the war that gave birth to America as a nation; it is generally considered to be the first national war, and the first to feature a professional American army. The social and cultural implications of Revolutionary ideas impacted the actual conduct of war. Poetry is probably the most dominant genre in American literature during the war in terms of quantity. The occasionally derisive tone of Thomas Paine’s pamphlets represents a common characteristic of Revolutionary War writing and found its most forceful expression in the satiric mode. While The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground doubtlessly succeeds in celebrating the moral virtue of selfless action in war, it does so under considerable strain. The depiction of the battle scenes underlines the sense of war as overwhelming the individual.
