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
Results 1-5 of 53
... interpretations . Bierce apparently had these flawed in- terpretations in mind when in the months that followed the December 23 , 1882 , appearance of the story he continued to provide retrospective material with clear connections to ...
... interpretations missed during the initial reading , and , ultimately , out of these various strands of inquiry a much more fully realized close reading of " A Holy Terror " emerges . " A Holy Terror " is subdivided into five sections or ...
... interpretations : to successfully serve its two distinct audiences as he desired it should , the tale had to produce such an outcome . As noted , in 1882 Bierce was recently returned from the Black Hills where he had gained firsthand ...
... interpreted . Quite deliberately , Bierce draws attention to the signifi- cance of nicknames and the intellectual peril posed by hasty interpretations in the opening lines of the tale : There was an entire lack of interest in the latest ...
... interpretation at the close of his unaltered succeeding paragraph where he writes " However it had come about , poor Scarry had indubitably been put into the earth face downward . " In this light , the original lines much more ...
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 |