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 58
... reason till the shower blows over . The Lily of the Valley shall bloom un- molested , and the ladies of the Palace Hotel pot him unafraid . Rogues , fools , impostors and disreputables of all sorts of kinds shall have a week of as ...
... reason can grasp no higher truths than that he is great because rich , wise because successful and good be- cause unhanged . This paper exists for his affliction , and if , in deference to the season , we forego that congenial function ...
... reason to note its significance , Bierce observes at the outset of his tale that the men in Hurdy - Gurdy once numbered two to three thousand , while the women were at the same time awkwardly accounted " not fewer than a dozen " ( 95 ...
... reasons for including the story in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians — among them its focus on the boundary that divides the living from the dead and Carcosa's links to San Francisco . One of the strongest claims of " An Inhabitant of ...
... reason . Clearly in this retelling the themes present in " An Inhabitant of Carcosa " as- sume their most expansive import . From an initial impulse directed at spiritu- alists and their followers early in 1885 , the thematic ...
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 |