‘The Franco Way’: The American Right and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–9

The following article is an intellectual and cultural history of the American supporters of Francisco Franco (hereafter referred to as American Francoites) and the Nationalist Movement during the Spanish Civil War. This article examines political pamphlets, magazines, radio broadcasts, journal articles, and books to reconstruct the American Francoite worldview. Like pro-Franco Catholics across the globe, American Francoites insisted the war was not between democracy and fascism but communism and Christianity; as Americans, they believed that supporting Franco was critical in fulfilling a patriotic and providential duty to protect Western Christendom from godless communism. Investigating the American Francoite worldview contributes to a recent body of scholarship detailing the rise of transnational anticommunism and nationalism as a constellation of culturally contingent reactions to the growth and spread of international communism. American Francoites emerged as one peculiar form of anticommunist American nationalism. In conclusion, this article argues that the political myths perpetuated by the pro-Franco argument – that the war was a battle between godless communism and Western Christendom – survived both the Spanish Civil War and Franco himself, merging easily into the ‘new conservatism’ of the postwar period and continuing to inform the beliefs and attitudes of the present right.

Dreaming of Death and the Dead in the Stuart Political World Imaginary

William Laud played a critical role in the politics and religion in the reign of James I and especially that of his son, Charles I. There was great antagonism toward him by Puritans, and Laud’s close friendship with George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, made Laud even more controversial, as did his fight with the king’s jester, Archy Armstrong. Dreams were seen as having great significance at time of Laud, and Laud recorded his dreams in his journal. Dreams also played a role in the early Stuart political world. This essay examines how Laud’s enemies used his own dreams against him in the work of William Prynne, once Laud was arrested during the English Civil war. It also looks at how Laud was compared to also despised Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey in a number of political pamphlets that used dreams, such as Archy’s Dream and Canterburie’s Dream. Laud also appeared as a character in a dream of Charles I’s attendant Thomas Herbert the night before the king’s execution, where Laud came to comfort Charles.

The Republic of Italy

This chapter looks at Italian judicial review and the Italian Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The Italian Bill of Rights and Italian judicial review emerged primarily as the result of a rights from wrongs process. This is shown by the Italian Constitutional Court’s first case in which it overturned an Italian Fascist-era law forbidding the distribution of political pamphlets. Moreover, judicial review has thrived in Italy because, unlike Japan, the Italian Constitution sets up a variety of different competing power centers among which the Constitutional Court can navigate to get its way. Meanwhile, the complex Italian political party systems in the last sixty years may have allowed the Italian Constitutional Court more freedom to navigate the Italian political process for the same reason that radical proportional representation in Israel helped Aharon Barak in cementing in place Israeli constitutionalism. Finally, Italy’s multiparty system may have caused alliances on the left and on the right to constitutionalize rights for “insurance and commitment” reasons.

Essays by Viktor Ya. Iretsky in the Context of the Journalism of 1917 and 1918

This article aims to initiate a study of an extremely interesting body of texts by Viktor Ya. Iretsky that were published in the major metropolitan newspaper Rech' [Speech] and caused a resonance in 1917-1918. The study of the originality of the half-forgotten prose writer's revolutionary journalism in the context of the ideological searches of the author's famous contemporaries - M. Gorky, V.G. Korolenko, L.N. Andreev, A.A. Blok, I.A. Bunin - seems relevant. Based on newspaper, magazine, and book collections of the National Library of Russia, the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the House of Russia Abroad, the article analyzes the essays published in Rech' from March 1917 to August 1918 using historical-literary and intertextual research methods. In the course of the research, the author selected the most revealing essays that are comparable to well-known journalistic works about the revolution, analyzed their artistic originality, evolution, and similarity to the journalism of 1917-1918. Iretsky's texts are thematically and ideologically similar to Andreev's articles and diary entries, Korolenko's writings, and - particularly - Gorky's cycle published in Novaya Zhizn' [New Life]; however, theses texts describe the facts, moods, and the revolutionary atmosphere from the point of view of an observer who opposes the revolution and, since May 1917, sees it only as destructive force. The author concludes that Iretsky's essays, reflecting the metamorphoses of the intelligentsia's perception of the revolution, problems close to Gorky's and Korolenko's notes, are more similar to emigrants' diaries, especially Bunin's Cursed Days, in their confessional nature, antiBolshevik pathos and artistry. The specificity of Iretsky's texts is explained by the attention to specific everyday material immersed in the cultural and historical context. The value of the essays is determined by its orientation to everyday life, inclusion of the living tissue of life in the texts; by its confessional nature, which back in 1917 and 1918 revealed a critical emigrant attitude - then expressed in diaries only - to the course of the revolutionary transformation of Russia; and by the inclusion of expressive historical and cultural figurative elements. Abstracting, analyzing the situation from the point of view of European history and culture (including the ideals of the French revolution), using images of works of Russian literature (Dead Souls by Gogol, The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, etc.) and reminiscences on them, Iretsky does not approach authors of political pamphlets, but rather such important figures of Russian journalism as Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Korolenko, and the diary prose of the brightest Russian writers.

Educating is Civilizing: the Pedagogy of Periodicals and Political Pamphlets of the Brazilian Independence Period (1821-1824)

Large amounts of circumstantial printed material flooded the city of Rio de Janeiro between 1821 and 1824. Its intent was to inform the population on what the new terms associated with current ideas meant. They became instruments of intervention in what their authors perceived as a public space. This paper aims at identifying what their messages meant, clarifying their rhetorical arguments and also pointing out the factors that limited or prevented them from achieving their goals.

The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697

During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. This book provides the first account of how this reputation developed, providing new insights into the processes and priorities that shaped narratives of sexual transgression in medieval and early modern England. In doing so, it analyses the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression in English, Latin and French; the conditions that created space for sympathetic depictions of same-sex love; and the use of medieval history in early modern political polemic. It also focuses, in particular, on the cultural impact of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (c.1591-92). Through such close readings of poetry and drama, alongside chronicle accounts and political pamphlets, it demonstrates that Edward’s medieval and early modern afterlife was significantly shaped by the influence of literary texts and techniques. A ‘literary transformation’ of historiographical methodology is, it argues, an apposite response to the factors that shaped medieval and early modern narratives of the past.

Hoping for a revolution Emperor Paul I, his heirs, and representation of power in I. Krylov's mock tragedy Podshchipa

The question of whether Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich was aware of or involved in the conspiracy against his father remains today as highly polemic as it was in the 19th c. The author claims that research into the reputational culture of the imperial court could change the status quo. The mock tragedy Podshchipa [or Trumf], penned by a young Ivan Krylov for the family of his benefactors, who had been banished from the capital by the Emperor, is a curious reflection on the real social capital of Paul I's heirs - Alexander and his spouse Elisabeth - and is devoted to the overthrow of the antihero Trumf, traditionally believed to represent Paul himself.A comparison between Krylov's characters and contemporary narratives like personal letters, diaries, and political pamphlets reveals an insider view of an impending political crisis, as witnessed by a Russian person in 1800.

THE SPECIFIC FEATURES OF DOCUMENTARY NOVEL GENRE IN THE MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE

The article is devoted to the study of the specific features of documentary novel in Modern American literature. The characteristics and evolution of a documentary novel are emphasized through the initial works of American authors. A documentary novel differs from other genres because of the factual and appropriate information. Norman Mailer, Truman Capote are considered to be the pioneering documentary novel writers in the Modern American literature. The initial establishments of documentary genre novel are considered to be the notes, religious laws, chronicles, political pamphlets, diaries, letters and others. Mostly, in documentary novels, the harshness of reality and difficulties of life, which sometimes keep unanswered, may be illustrated with the vital essentialities. The documentary novel is inclusive and non-selective, for the novelist does not select the elements of his experience in order to project a total perspective on life. Main characteristics of a documentary novel and its target should be minimally structured and its language should be an objective and non-imaginative. Besides, a documentary novel is one of the essential literary genres in the Modern American literature, which unrevealed secrets or the reality of circumstances depicted in main descriptions. A non-fiction novel and a documentary novel are appropriate to describe works that are read like novels but are based on facts documented by the author. Both literary terms denote a novel version of nonfictional events in the different periods. The usage of various language, symbols, narrative, metaphor, personage, intertextuality and all other required literary tools, novelists let the readers access to meaning and truth in writing the documentary novel. Truman Capote’s aptitude to give real-life accounts the feel and weight of a fiction piece have flourished the genre in Modern American literature. Even, nowadays, a half-century after the first ever nonfiction novel, journalists, directors, writers, the people of arts, generally, all of them, understand and utilize ideas, themes, and techniques made popular by Truman Capote in our everyday media and literature.