Discursive stratagems: Ambrose Bierce's attacks on realism's metaphysics of language
30 Nov 1994-Iss: 7, pp 97-114
TL;DR: The authors explored the stylistic devices and narrative techniques that the late 19th-century great American satirist employed to subvert and ridicule his contemporaries' understanding of language and its relationship to reality.
Abstract: This article explores the stylistic devices and narrative techniques that the late 19th-century great American satirist employed to subvert and ridicule his contemporaries' understanding of language and of its relationship to reality. According to Bierce, language is not merely a constative and aseptic means to represent the world around us and communicate ideas. On the contrary, all discourses are loaded with a great deal of power and knowledge which make them about the most effective -and dangerous- performative instruments in our culture. By drawing assiduously from the writings of such theorists as Bakhtin, Foulcault, or Kristeva, this critical piece tries to demonstrate that Bierce's charges against realism allegedly neutral utilization of language were well-grounded. In order to do so, the dialogic character, parodic tone, and effective stylization of two of Bierce's best-known stories, "Chickamauga" and "My Favourite Murder," are studied in some depth. By the end of the article, the reader should have recognized a number of the reasons for Bierce's attested "obscurity" in his own days and after.
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TL;DR: The first edition of as mentioned in this paper was published in 1912 and the 1981 reissue was the first edition to be re-issued in the USA, with a revised version of the introduction.
Abstract: Preface to the first edition Preface to the 1981 reissue 1. American realism: a grammar of motives 2. Novels and novelists: the era of Howells and James 3. Literature of argument 4. Lives of the Americans: the class of the '70s 5. Renaissance: 1912 and after Select bibliography Index of names and titles Index of selected topics.
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TL;DR: Iser as mentioned in this paper provides a framework for a theory of literary effects and aesthetic responses, whereby the reader is given the chance to recognize the deficiencies of his own existence and the suggested solutions to counterbalance them.
Abstract: Like no other art form, the novel confronts its readers with circumstances arising from their own environment of social and historical norms and stimulates them to assess and criticize their surroundings. By analyzing major works of English fiction ranging from Bunyan, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray to Joyce and Beckett, renowned critic Wolfgang Iser here provides a framework for a theory of such literary effects and aesthetic responses. Iser's focus is on the theme of discovery, whereby the reader is given the chance to recognize the deficiencies of his own existence and the suggested solutions to counterbalance them. The content and form of this discovery is the calculated response of the reader -- the implied reader. In discovering the expectations and presuppositions that underlie all his perceptions, the reader learns to \"read\" himself as he does the text.
654 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the reader, listener and spectator play an extremely limited role in both literary theories, and the reader is assumed to have the theoretical knowledge of a philologist sufficiently versed in the tools of literature to be able to reflect on them.
Abstract: take up once again the unresolved dispute between the Marxist and formalist schools. My attempt to bridge the gap between literature and history, between historical and aesthetic approaches, begins at the point at which both schools stop. Their methods understand the literary fact in terms of the circular aesthetic system of production and of representation. In doing so, they deprive literature of a dimension which unalterably belongs to its aesthetic character as well as to its social function: its reception and impact. Reader, listener and spectator-in short, the audience-play an extremely limited role in both literary theories. Orthodox Marxist aesthetics treats the readerif at all-the same way as it does the author; it inquires about his social position or describes his place within the structure of the society. The formalist school needs the reader only as a perceiving subject who follows the directions in the text in order to perceive its form or discover its techniques of procedure. It assumes that the reader has the theoretical knowledge of a philologist sufficiently versed in the tools of literature to be able to reflect on them. The Marxist school, on the other hand, actually equates the spontaneous experience of the reader with the scholarly interest of historical materialism, which seeks to discover relationships between the economic basis of production and the literary work as part of the intellectual superstructure. However, as Walther Bulst has stated, "no text was ever written to be read and interpreted philologically by philologists," 1 nor, may I add, historically by his-
470 citations
01 Jan 1983
TL;DR: The earliest period of Arthurian writing, discussed in Chapter 1, produced minor texts with distinct social contexts and one major work rich with contemporary meaning, Culhwch ac Olwen.
Abstract: The earliest period of Arthurian writing, discussed in Chapter 1, produced minor texts with distinct social contexts and one major work rich with contemporary meaning, Culhwch ac Olwen. The modern period is remarkably similar. Many versions of the Arthurian legend have flourished, each with its special ideological interest, but only one fully realises the social and historical forces of its period. That is Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (published in 1889: the British edition dropped the place-name and then adjusted the rhythm to A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur).
23 citations
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01 Jan 1965TL;DR: The first edition of as mentioned in this paper was published in 1912 and the 1981 reissue was the first edition to be re-issued in the USA, with a revised version of the introduction.
Abstract: Preface to the first edition Preface to the 1981 reissue 1. American realism: a grammar of motives 2. Novels and novelists: the era of Howells and James 3. Literature of argument 4. Lives of the Americans: the class of the '70s 5. Renaissance: 1912 and after Select bibliography Index of names and titles Index of selected topics.
20 citations
4 citations