Gale Researcher Guide for: Naturalism and War in the Writings of Ambrose Bierce is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.
Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.
Gathers quotations about agriculture, anthropology, astronomy, the atom, energy, engineering, genetics, medicine, physics, science and society, and research
“Dictionary, n: A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.” Bierce’s groundbreaking Devil’s Dictionary had a complex publication history. Started in the mid-1800s as an irregular column in Californian newspapers under various titles, he gradually refined the new-at-the-time idea of an irreverent set of glossary-like definitions. The final name, as we see it titled in this work, did not appear until an 1881 column published in the periodical The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp. There were no publications of the complete glossary in the 1800s. Not until 1906 did a portion of Bierce’s collection get published by Doubleday, under the name The Cynic’s Word Book—the publisher not wanting to use the word “Devil” in the title, to the great disappointment of the author. The 1906 word book only went from A to L, however, and the remainder was never released under the compromised title. In 1911 the Devil’s Dictionary as we know it was published in complete form as part of Bierce’s collected works (volume 7 of 12), including the remainder of the definitions from M to Z. It has been republished a number of times, including more recent efforts where older definitions from his columns that never made it into the original book were included. Due to the complex nature of copyright, some of those found definitions have unclear public domain status and were not included. This edition of the book includes, however, a set of definitions attributed to his one-and-only “Demon’s Dictionary” column, including Bierce’s classic definition of A: “the first letter in every properly constructed alphabet.” Bierce enjoyed “quoting” his pseudonyms in his work. Most of the poetry, dramatic scenes and stories in this book attributed to others were self-authored and do not exist outside of this work. This includes the prolific Father Gassalasca Jape, whom he thanks in the preface—“jape” of course having the definition: “a practical joke.” This book is a product of its time and must be approached as such. Many of the definitions hold up well today, but some might be considered less palatable by modern readers. Regardless, the book’s humorous style is a valuable snapshot of American culture from past centuries. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
She has just given birth to their child. He labels her postpartum depression as »hysteria.« He rents the attic in an old country house. Here, she is to rest alone – forbidden to leave her room. Instead of improving, she starts hallucinating, imagining herself crawling with other women behind the room's yellow wallpaper. And secretly, she records her experiences. The Yellow Wall-Paper [1892] is the short but intense, Gothic horror story, written as a diary, about a woman in an attic – imprisoned in her gender; by the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist novella was long overlooked in American literary history. Nowadays, it is counted among the classics. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860–1935), born in Hartford, Connecticut, was an American feminist theorist, sociologist, novelist, short story writer, poet, and playwright. Her writings are precursors to many later feminist theories. With her radical life attitude, Perkins Gilman has been an inspiration for many generations of feminists in the USA. Her most famous work is the short story The Yellow Wall-Paper [1892], written when she suffered from postpartum psychosis.
On the eve of his coming of age, a young Lord begins to see the truth of his parents' lives: his mother cannot buy her way into society no matter how hard he tries, and his father is being ruined by her continued attempts. The young Lord then travels to his home in Ireland, encountering adventure on the way, and discovers that the native residents are being exploited in his father's absence.
This book is a collection of essays designed for high school and college teachers who want to introduce non-Western and other non-canonical texts into their traditional literature courses. The essays in the book explore the kinds of visions encountered when teachers cluster Western texts with those outside the dominant Western tradition. Papers in the introductory section are: "World Literature in Context" (S. Lawall); "Facing Others, Facing Ourselves" (J. P. Hunter); and "Global Perspectives: A Thematic Approach" (S. W. Lott). Papers in the "Private Worlds" section are: "Colonial Encounters of an Autobiographical Kind: Bringing the Personal Voices of Sean O'Casey and Wole Soyinka to the Literature Classroom" (R. Ayling); "Mariama Ba's 'So Long a Letter' and Alice Walker's 'In Search of Our Mother's Gardens'" (D. Grimes); and "Private Worlds: A Bibliographic Essay" (S. Palmer). Papers in the "Hero's Quest" section are: "Heroic Visions in 'The Bhagavad Gita' and the Western Epic" (M. Foley); "Contending with the Masculinist Traditions: 'Sundiata's Sogolon and the Wife of Bath" (S. Vance); "Soseki's 'Kokoro': The Voice of the Exile in Quest of a Modern Self" (P. Anderer); and "The Hero's Quest: A Bibliographic Essay" (E. Hughes and C. Gravlee). Papers in the section on "The Individual, the Family, and Society" are: "'The World Was All before Them': Coming of Age in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's 'Weep Not, Child' and Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye'" (S. Latham and S. Lott); "Cooper's Indians, Erdrich's Natives Americans" (M. A. McCay); and "The Individual, the Family, and Society: A Bibliographic Essay" (E. H. Rodgers). Papers in the section on "Intertextuality and Cultural Identity" are: "Crossing Cultural Bridges in Search of Drama" (A. Parkin); "Segregation in India: Forster's 'A Passage to India' and Anand's 'Untouchable'" (U. Ahlawat); "'The King Will Come': Laye Camara's Response to Kafka's World Vision" (P. Egejuru); "Carlos Fuentes's Tribute (and Reply) to Ambrose Bierce in 'The Old Gringo'" (E. Espadas); "African American Renderings of Traditional Texts" (N. Lester); "Politics and the Poet in Baraka's 'The Slave': Turning and Turning in Yeat's Gyres" (M. S. G. Hawkins); and "Intertextuality and Cultural Identity: A Bibliographic Essay" (M. S. G. Hawkins). Papers in the section on "Approaches to Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart'" are: "Chinua Achebe: The Bicultural Novel and the Ethics of Reading" (B. Henricksen); "If the Shoe Fits: Teaching 'Beowulf' with Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart'" (L. Purdon and J. Wasserman); "An African Turnus: Heroic Response to Colonialism in Vergil's 'Aeneid' and Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart'" (N. McMillan); "The Center Holds: The Resilience of Ibo Culture in 'Things Fall Apart'" (N. Sarr); and "Approaches to 'Things Fall Apart': A Bibliographic Essay" (J. Lott and S. Lott). (RS)
This book offers a counter-traditional account of the history of both rhetoric and poetics. In reply to traditional rhetorical histories, which view "rhetoric" primarily as an art of practical civic oratory, the book argues in four extended essays that epideictic-poetic eloquence was central, even fundamental, to the rhetorical tradition in antiquity. In essence, Jeffrey Walker's study accomplishes what in the world of rhetoric studies amounts to a revolution: he demonstrates that in antiquity rhetoric and poetry could not be viewed separately.
