The Bridge and Narrativization of Vision: Ambrose Bierce and Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract

The article contains a comparative study of the visual poetics observed in the literary texts of American writer Ambrose Bierce and Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov. In particular, the study focuses on Bierce’s short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Nabokov’s three short stories “Details of a Sunset”, “Aurelian”, and “Perfection”, in all three of which a number of narrative tools, images, and motifs borrowed from Bierce’s text can be found. The representation of the bridge and the narrativization of mystical insight are regarded as the principal features of the correlative imagery systems. These features are analyzed in order to discover Bierce’s and Nabokov’s understandings of the artist, visual imagination, and the freedom of will.