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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... sentences : the reference to a " still , small voice that whispers of the gilded villain's feet of clay " faithfully anticipates Doman's fearful contempla- tion of the upright casket in the opened grave , and the description of a man ...
... sentence that broadly alludes to the difficult reading experience presented by his recent Christmas tale and con- tinued with several sentences that variously hint at the environs of Hurdy- Gurdy and its cemetery even though they appear ...
... sentence does not describe the coffin , but Doman's extraordi- nary realization that Scarry — euphemistically a frail sister — has been put into her grave face down . Bierce lends credence to this interpretation at the close of his ...
... his art . The next minor alteration , only four sentences further along , illustrates Bierce's editorial eye for detail . In the original version of the story Bierce personified the abandoned dwellings 66 A HOLY TERROR " 25.
... sentence for his 1892 volume , Bierce replaced the word " dilapidated " with " decaying , " a substitution that both eliminates the awkward note of the ordinary that the original use of " dilapidated " sounded , and artfully continues ...
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 |