A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE
CIVILIZATION
I
The question “Does civilization civilize?”
is a fine example of petitio principii, and
decides itself in the affirmative; for civilization
must needs d...
Read more
Ambrose Bierce's literary reputation is based primarily on his short stories about the Civil War and the supernaturala body of work that makes up a relatively small part of his total output. Often com...
Read more
The American writer Ambrose Gwinett Bierce (1842-ca. 1914) expressed the cynicism of the post-Civil War era and shaped both the materials and the methods of writers who later voiced the disillusionmen...
Read more
The achievement of Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce as a humorist is underrated, largely because attention has focused on his grim tales of war and the macabre. To consider the great majority of works in his c...
Read more
The late Carey McWilliams, an astute observer of the national scene, has pointed out that every American should have some familiarity with Ambrose Bierce , that aloof and independent iconoclast who w...
Read more
Bitter Bierce, the caustic columnist. Thus was Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce best known, and thus is he best remembered. Yet in his lifetime he embraced several careers: soldier, expatriate literatur, gold ...
Read more
Within the last two decades Ambrose Bierce has begun to attract the scholarly attention his work deserves. For example, Brigid Brophy remarked in 1973 that those who were ignorant of literary history ...
Read more
In the more than seventy years since his mysterious disappearance in Mexico, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce has been known almost as much for his colorful life as for his experimental fiction. Well over six ...
Read more
Ambrose Bierce is far more than a regional, or western, writer. He has come to be recognized as an outstanding exemplar of literary impressionism, a counterweight to the emphasis on realism and natura...
Read more
Biography EssayThe late Carey McWilliams, himself an astute observer of the national scene, has pointed out that every American should have some familiarity with Ambrose Bierce, that aloof and indepen...
Read more