Spanish Carlism in Russian literature
Abstract
Since its emergence in 1833, the Spanish Carlist movement has been widely represented in world culture. In the present article, a number of Russian texts written between 1833 and 1939 that deal with the Carlist theme are analyzed. The lowest time boundary marks the start of the First Carlist War; the upper boundary, the end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of the Francoist dictatorship. The paper opens with a short overview of Spanish Carlism history highlights and a brief look at some European literary works that touch upon the theme. The article seeks to trace how Russian men of letters from world-famous fiction classics, such as Gogol or Dostoevsky, to non-fiction writers less known outside Russia, including travel-writers (Botkin, Aivazovsky, Podolinski, Kapustin, Vyrubov), political journalists (Nemirovich-Danchenko), and memoirists (Yaremchuk; Shinkarenko) reflected upon the Carlist movement in their works. Different models of creating the image of Spanish Carlism in Russian literature are shown. We propose a hypothesis that the Carlist movement should have exerted considerable influence on Russian literature and shaped the image of Spain in Russian public opinion in 1833–1939. We have come to the conclusion that the view of Carlism among Russian men of letters was uneven throughout its history.
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