Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical StudyAmbrose Bierce's In the Midst of Life, the second volume of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, is hailed by critics and scholars alike as his most important literary work. In Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study, Donald T. Blume refutes this and instead identifies Bierce's original 1892 collection as his most definitive and authoritative work. The two subsequent collections, appearing in 1898 and 1909, although containing subtle clues pointing back to the importance of the 1892 collection, are in their primary effect literary red herrings. This new study reveals that the nineteen stories that comprised the original Tales of Soldiers and Civilians consist of carefully developed and interrelated meanings and themes that can only be fully understood by examining the complex circumstances of their original productions. By considering each of the nineteen tales in the order in which they were first published and by drawing heavily on contemporary related materials, Blume re-creates much of the original milieu into which Bierce carefully placed his short stories. Blume systematically examines many of Bierce's editing flaws, exposing that Bierce's decisions often weakened the original literary merits of his stories. Ultimately this story reveals, tale by tale and layer by layer, that the nineteen stories included in Bierce's 1892 collection were masterpieces of fiction, destined to become classics. Historians and Civil War enthusiasts, as well as literary scholars, will welcome this new study. |
From inside the book
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... death , as life , its character the same , And seen , as ever in a salted claim . ) " As Phoenix from her ashes rises light , And butterflies are sun - warm grubs in flight ; As torpid snakes revive at touch of Spring , And frozen bugle ...
... death into the scene . Thus , as Doman looks into the " gloom of the grave " surrounding his feet for the imagi- nary rattlesnake , " [ a ] hoarse , gurgling sound , like the death - rattle in a human throat , seemed to come out of the ...
... death from an excess of irra- tional fear — connect it thematically to many of the other stories included in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians . Although all the stories in the 1892 collection involve elements of an altered mental state ...
... death from an excess of irrational fear or terror is echoed by similar deaths in " One of the Missing , " " A Tough Tussle , " and " The Man and the Snake , " and , with slight variations , in the deaths of characters in several ...
... desecrating a woman's grave in search of gold . Further- more , these uninformed readers will in all probability also blithely acquiesce to Bierce's parting assertion that the death of Mary Matthews " A HOLY TERROR " 7.
Contents
1 | |
34 | |
Killed at Resaca | 64 |
One of the Missing | 83 |
A Son of the Gods | 99 |
A Tough Tussle | 114 |
Chickamauga | 124 |
The Horseman in the Sky | 145 |
The Watcher by the Dead | 193 |
The Man and the Snake | 203 |
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge | 211 |
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot | 244 |
Haïta the Shepherd | 259 |
James Adderson Philosopher and Wit | 276 |
An Heiress from Redhorse | 302 |
The Boarded Window | 315 |
The Coup de Grâce | 161 |
The Suitable Surroundings | 179 |
The Affair at Coulters Notch | 185 |
The Collections | 329 |