The Devil’s Dictionary

中文名：
魔鬼词典
作者：
安布鲁斯·比尔斯 Ambrose Bierce
类型：
小说经典
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魔鬼词典(The Devil’s Dictionary)简介：
The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, is a satirical book published in 1911. It offers reinterpretations of terms in the English language which lampoon cant and political double-talk.
The Devil's Dictionary has inspired many imitations both in its day and more recently. Recent examples include The Computer Contradictionary, The Devil's Dictionary X and Lucifer's Lexicon.
The origins of the Devil's Dictionary can be traced to when Ambrose Bierce was a columnist in the San Francisco-based News Letter, a small weekly financial magazine which had been founded by Frederick Marriott in the late 1850s. The News Letter, although a serious magazine aimed at businessmen, contained a page set aside for informal satirical content, entitled The Town Crier. Bierce was hired as this page's editor in December 1868, writing with satire, irreverence and a lack of inhibition, thus becoming known as the 'laughing devil' of San Francisco.
Although the origins of the Devil's Dictionary are normally placed in 1881 (the point at which Bierce himself said it began) the idea started in August 1869 when Bierce, short of topics to write about and having recently bought a new copy of Webster's Unabridged dictionary, suggested the possibility of writing a "Comic Dictionary". He quoted the entry from Webster's for Viceregent and italicised the section,
Kings are sometimes called God's viceregents. It is to be wished they would always deserve the appellation
He then suggested how Noah Webster might have used his talent in a comic form and it was here that the idea of a Comic Dictionary was born.
The idea manifested itself in 1875 when Bierce, who had resigned as the Town Crier and had spent 3 years in London, returned to San Francisco in the hope of regaining his earlier journalistic post in the News Letter. He sent two submissions to the editor of the News Letter, both written under aliases, one of which was entitled The Demon's Dictionary and contained 48 words with new definitions in Bierce's trademark style of acerbic wit. Although forgotten by Ambrose Bierce in his compiling of the Devil's Dictionary, these entries were made available in the Enlarged Devil's Dictionary, which was first published in 1967.　　Bierce,Ambrose，1842/1914，是一位美国记者和作家，他的短篇小说最为著名，这些小说为人们展示了一个刻薄、残酷和可怕世界。他的后半生是在无聊和悲伤中度过的，这在他的最著名的《魔鬼辞典》中有所验证。这本书在那些对世界拥有玩世不恭态度的人中相当流行。
　　《魔鬼辞典》里许多简明的定义都充满着智慧而又幽默的语调。该书最早是以《讽刺家词典》(The Cynic's Word Book)(1906)名称出版，并于1991年改为现名出版。使得词语的定义令人快愉的原因是它们反映了比尔斯那怀疑、悲观和幽默的深沉感情。苦涩的比尔斯，就象人们称呼他那样，写了许多作品，其中包括名为《战士与平民的故事》(1891)的故事精选集。在1913年，比尔斯声明说，他已经厌恶美国式的文明。他已经购置了一套马车，并驱车前往饱经战争创伤的墨西哥心脏，去寻找“真、善、美”。但没有人知道他的未来怎样。

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