The devil's topographer: Ambrose Bierce and the American war story

David M Owens, Purdue University

Abstract

This project uncovers and explores a crucially important autobiographical context in Ambrose Bierce's Civil War fiction. By identifying and examining the actual terrain in which the stories are set, in conjunction with Bierce's own military experience, the dissertation demonstrates that the stories document his personal pilgrimage through the war and contends that thematic concerns in them reflect his development as a soldier rather than as an artist. By bringing under careful scrutiny the geography of Bierce's settings—a geography never wholly fictional but seldom entirely factual—the dissertation analyzes the variety of techniques that Bierce employs to create the verisimilitude and reader complicity that are characteristic of his best work. This study examines Bierce's twenty-two war stories chronologically according to the time of the action of the story. By arranging the stories in such a chronology and plotting the locations of the stories' settings, what results is a reasonably accurate chart of Bierce's own progress through the war. Simply put, Bierce's habit was to write about places he was during times he was there, regardless of whether the events of the story are based on real incidents or purely invented. What also emerges from such a study is an appreciation of the impact Bierce's personal and professional maturation as a soldier had on his war fiction. Two other general patterns emerge as well. The first is that when Bierce tells a war story that deals with the human psyche under extraordinary stress, he will tend to do so in a setting that is only vaguely identifiable or is a fictional composite of features from different locations. The second is that when Bierce tells a story with supernatural elements, he will set it in a very specific, identifiable, existing location. After showing how Bierce's war experiences specifically influence his fiction, the dissertation concludes by exploring the wider implications of Bierce's contribution to war short fiction, and, in turn, the significance of the war story as a sub-genre of short fiction in American literature.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Lamb, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature

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