kamaugawar and the creation of a dystopian reality: A study in hassan Blasim's "Crossword" and Ambrose Bierce's "Chi

The study shows how war can create a dystopian reality worse than the reality depicted in the dystopian stories. War creates a circular or enclosed world that has no exit where people cannot see the end of the tunnel. The study discusses two short stories, one is for the Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim entitled "Crosswords" and the other for the American writer Ambrose Bierce entitled "Chickamauga". These two short stories fit one of the categories of dystopian fiction where the society witnesses the effects of war and civilians and soldiers become the victims. Though the two stories do not adhere to the futuristic perspective of dystopian fiction, they could express the thought of their writers' that what is going on in the society though it is real but it is at the same time, dystopian. Key Words: Dystopia, War, Defamiliarization, Hassan Blasim, Ambrose Bierce.

THE IMAGE OF THE CIVIL WAR IN “TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS” BY AMBROSE BIERCE

The article deals with the image of the Civil War in war stories by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). The specifics of the war's representation in writer's literary works are analyzed, the features of man at war are revealed. The particularity of the artistic world of stories by A. Bierce is recognized. The research is carried out on the material of the collection of short stories “Tales of Soldiers and Civilians” (1891): “Killed at Resaca” (1887), “A Son of the Gods” (1888), “One of the Missing” (1888), “A Tough Tussle”, (1888), “A Horseman in the Sky” (1889), “Chickamauga” (1889), “The Affair at Coulter's Notch” (1889), “The Coup de Grâce”, (1889), “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890), “Parker Adderson, Philosopher” (1891). The analysis is provided in the context of American Civil War literature of 1880s and 1890s and by taking into account writer's biography, a conclusion about the genre features of his literary works is also presented. The scientific novelty of the work is a complex analysis of early creativity of A. Bierce in the context of American military fiction.

Jacques Sternberg : le mépris par alphabet

Jacques Sternberg (1923-2006) fut une figure singulière de la scène littéraire parisienne dans les années 1960-1970, aujourd’hui surtout connue pour sa collaboration avec Alain Resnais et Roland Topor. En 1973, il publie un Dictionnaire du mépris où, en 443 entrées (d’Absurde à Zoo en passant par Minable), il exprime sa détestation de l’humanité en général et de la France pompidolienne en particulier. Le livre, qui sera suivi en 1985 par un Dictionnaire des idées revues, est rarement drôle. Son principal intérêt réside dans le recours à la forme alphabétique (empruntée à Voltaire, Flaubert et Ambrose Bierce) et dans son titre. Sternberg, qui prétend ne pas s’intéresser aux gens et ne pas aimer la littérature, se sent comme un prêtre qui ne croirait pas en Dieu. Mais pour lui le mépris est une passion revendiquée, étape nécessaire pour parvenir au « véritable humour », qui a peut-être ses racines dans l’expérience de l’horreur de la guerre et des camps où son père perdit la vie.

Bierce, Bioy Casares, and Borges: The Mirrors and Labyrinths of Intertextuality

This article analyzes the intersection of works by Ambrose Bierce, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Jorge Luis Borges as mirror images of themes and descriptions in describing a miraculous occurrence, albeit only in the labyrinthine mind of the protagonist, often categorized within the genre of the fantastic. The article’s intertextual approach focuses on sensorial perceptions that only grant validity to an internal reality (what the mind interprets) rather than to an external reality (what the eyes see). All three works in this study are concerned with a criminal condemned to death who seeks to prolong his life. The protagonists have similar responses, although their motivations are different.

War in the Short Stories by Ambrose Bierce “What I Saw of Shiloh” and “Killed at Resaca”

The article considers the martial theme in Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War novels. With the help of historical, systematic, and comparative methods of research as well as content analysis, the author attempts to determine how the writer depicts the war, what his attitude to the conflict between the North and the South is, and how his war experience relates to his creative work. She focuses on two Civil War stories “What I Saw of Shilohˮ (1881) and “Killed at Resacaˮ (1887), paying special attention to connections between those texts. Bierce wrote about the war events in which he participated. He was not looking for fame and had no intention to glorify the military actions or combatants. Bierce’s Civil War stories are based on literary paradox and the principle of contradiction. Routine situations, in which his characters find themselves, always turn into something extraordinary. “What I Saw of Shilohˮ has a special place among Bierce’s war stories, since here he incorporates literary devices into a factual narrative, employing topographic accuracy in battle description, hyperorality in reporting deaths, and a clearly ironic approach to senseless heroism. Horror, fear, and death feature as key motifs in the writer’s creative work. Bierce wants the reader to remember the war without waxing nostalgic about the glorious past: his officers in white uniforms on white horses die in ugly ways, and those whom they loved quickly forget them (“Killed at Resacaˮ). By employing the illogical and irrational in his stories, Bierce compels the reader to decry the illogicality and irrationality of war.