Conservative Writers Research Articles

Partisan Media and Political Poll Coverage

ABSTRACTResearch on selective exposure and cognitive dissonance centers on receivers of content, but message crafters can influence the process by preselecting content with an ideological fit for an audience. This study examines partisan media producers with a focus on poll reporting during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. A content analysis of 323 stories from leading partisan sites indicates that authors were more likely to write about polls that showed their preferred electoral outcomes. Headlines and lead paragraphs also showed partisan bias. Results also provided partial support for cognitive dissonance theory; conservative writers were more likely to raise poll criticism in stories when President Obama’s lead was greater. Implications for trust in government and media are discussed.

Academic Conservatives and the Future of Higher Education

Having largely disappeared from the humanities and social sciences, conservatives have become the Other in progressive discussions of higher education. Crucial to this othering is the ascription of personal faults, such as racism or a lack of interest in marginal student populations. This article presents an alternative view of academic conservative writers on higher education. Rather than focus on their policy recommendations, it focuses on their perceptions of contemporary higher education, and finds that academic conservatives (as distinct from many conservative politicians) argue for the same goals as their progressive counterparts: a strong program of liberal arts, critical thinking, and access to education for diverse student populations. It divides these writers into two broad categories for analysis: traditional conservatives and libertarians. Suggestions are provided for readers who wish to explore these ideas more fully.

The Covert Strengthening of Islamic Extremists under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush

Some political analysts in the U.S. manage to remain objective as they examine a particular subject. However, there are many who let their political leanings impact the conclusions that they reach in their respective publications. An analyst with a conservative bias will usually seek to enhance the image of a Republican by comparing him to Ronald Reagan and other revered figures that were associated with the Grand Old Party at one time. In 2001, George W. Bush signed a bill that substantially cut taxes in the United States. Shortly after this turn of events, various conservative writers started to compare him to Reagan since he also provided American taxpayers with relief during his first term in office.

Social Democracy in America?

Recently, a group of conservative policy intellectuals and writers captured the attention of the media and even of a few Republican politicians. These “reformocons,” including Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review, and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, believe it is time for the Republican Party to propose public policy solutions to domestic issues like health care and education, rather than provoke the cultural resentments of the party base, what Douthat has called the politics of “white identity.”

The First English History of the Russian Time of Troubles: Samuel Purchas’s “Late Changes” (1625)

Samuel Purchas’s Hakluytus Posthumus, first published in 1625, is a collection of travel accounts similar to that edited by Richard Hakluyt in the late sixteenth century, but it also includes the earliest secondary history of the Time of Troubles in English. Purchas’s chapter entitled “The late changes and manifold alterations in Russia since Ivan Vasilowich to this present …” combines documentary publication with narrative history. This article examines the source materials used by Purchas and discusses his own commentary on events. Purchas considers that historians should demonstrate the justice of God’s providence in punishing a people’s sins, and he assesses the reigns of Ivan IV and Boris Godunov in this light. He enlivens his narrative with elaborate metaphors, including that of Russia during the interregnum of 1610–1612 as a “many-headed monster”. This metaphor was commonly used by conservative writers in early modern England to designate the ordinary people, but Purchas uses it more creatively in relation to Russia, to signify not only the multitude but also the rival candidates for the throne, including pretenders (samozvantsy).

Amelia Opie's Fiction: Contagious and Recuperative Texts

This essay considers how moral and physical contagion feature repeatedly in the fiction of Amelia Opie, and argues that despite her reputation as a conservative writer, Opie offers a radical reevaluation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourses of virtue and fallenness. Though stereotypical “fallen” characters initially appear to be the agents of contagion in narratives like The Father and Daughter, Adeline Mowbray, and Madeline, Opie reveals that the actual contaminating forces at work in each case are ideological ones, rooted in society's constrained and often hypocritical definitions of virtue. Her texts allow for the social and moral recovery of the transgressive woman, and posit that the true need for recuperation lies not in the fallen woman, but in the world that sees her as such. By the very “respectable” works through which she distances herself from the radical politics of her youth, then, Opie insidiously infects readers with lingering questions about and criticisms of the status quo.

Chateaubriand y Pitou, proveedores ‘reales’ de El siglo de las luces de Alejo Carpentier

The essay analyses the intertextual dialogue in El siglo de las luces by Alejo Carpentier with the work by the conservative writer Chateaubriand and the memories Voyage à Cayenne, by the French monarchist Louis-Ange Pitou. Both authors are included in the preparatory documents of the novel, conserved in Havana and never consulted until now. Whereas Carpentier resignifies the literal quotes of the literary text by means of the co-text, the fragments of the historical-testimonial work are amplified, in accordance with the typical baroque style of the author. Both works overthrow the ideas proposed by El siglo de las luces, because Chateaubriand defends Romanticism and Pitou attacks the barbarism of the Revolution. These two examples contribute to grasp the poetics of Carpentier that consists of rewriting, subversion and assimilation of texts, often written by Europeans and related to America.

Artemio de Valle-Arizpe y su visión del México colonial by Dolores E Rangel (review)

Reviewed by: Artemio de Valle-Arizpe y su visión del México colonial by Dolores E Rangel Brian L. Price Rangel, Dolores E. Artemio de Valle-Arizpe y su visión del México colonial. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 2011. 243 pp. In his essay, “On the Utility and Liability of History for Life,” Nietzsche commented that “history pertains to the person who preserves and venerates, to him who looks back with loyalty and love on the origins through which he becomes what he is.” He continued to suggest that knowledge of the past is only valuable to society inasmuch as it inspires individuals to improve upon their current state. Overindulgence in memory, which he ascribes to an antiquarian mindset, leads to disengagement from the present and social atrophy. Thus Nietzsche warns against allowing reverence for bygone eras to overcome the utility of history for the present moment. With this thought in mind, I would like to briefly discuss Dolores E. Rangel’s book, Artemio de Valle-Arizpe y su visión del México colonial, a recent analysis of one of Mexico’s forgotten writers. Both Valle-Arizpe, in his writing about Mexico’s colonial period, and Rangel, in her recuperation of Valle-Arizpe, precariously and productively straddle this line. Artemio de Valle-Arizpe was a central figure in the early-twentieth-century literary group known as the colonialistas, so called for their literary and historical investigations into the Baroque society in New Spain. Popular in their moment, they were soon discarded as nationalist culture in the 1920s increasingly centered on the Mexican Revolution as its focal point. Valle-Arizpe was a traditional historical novelist who, by his own admission, was overcome by history. When confronted with the destructive realities of the Revolution, he turned his back on the present and sought refuge in a colonial past that he considered to be the moment of cultural genesis for the nation. This turn to the past is reminiscent of the same gesture made by another conservative writer, Lucas Alamán, who wrote monumental pro- Hispanic histories of the colony during the ideological wars of the 1850s. Both men delved into the past when the disasters of the present seemed overwhelming. But unlike Alamán, for whom history was actualized by his political activity, Valle-Arizpe’s unwillingness to confront the present rendered his work obsolete as post-revolutionary institutions sought to redefine national culture vis-à-vis the social revolution that had ended a few years prior and was now transitioning into what would later come to be called the institutionalized revolution, or in other words, the bureaucratic and political realization of revolutionary ideals. Within this newly emerging political-aesthetic paradigm, promoted ironically enough by two colonialist writers (Julio Jiménez Rueda and Francisco Monterde), the backward glancing [End Page 364] texts of Valle-Arizpe seem anachronistic and escapist in their attempt to recapture the cultural splendor of the colony while trenchantly avoiding direct engagement with the present. Following a somewhat perfunctory introduction, Rangel divides her book into four chapters that set out to restore some of the prestige of Valle-Arizpe’s work. The first briefly sketches the literary milieu of the early twentieth century, offers readers a general overview of the colonialist group and their affinities with their contemporaries of the Ateneo de la Juventud, and delves ever so slightly into a discussion of historical novel theory taking as main points of reference Noé Jitrik and Georg Lukács. The second chapter is a quick-paced analysis of five of Valle-Arizpe’s novels—Cosas tenedes (1922), Doña Leonor de Cáceres y Acevedo (1922), El Canillitas (1941), La movilidad inquieta (1945), and Deleite para indiscretos (1955)—where she argues that Valle-Arizpe’s irreverent sense of humor, penchant for the grotesque, and encyclopedic knowledge of the period grant readers important insights into the daily life and customs of the colony. The third chapter, unquestionably the longest at nearly eighty pages, tackles the leyendas and tradiciones that Rangel identifies as “cápsulas de ‘verdad’ que históricamente son valiosas” and which function as an alternate source of history that makes the past more accessible to...

"Hamlet" in Slovenia: From Myth to Theatre

IntroductionHamlet is one of the very few works of the global literary canon that have been translated into Slovene more than once. There are four complete published translations of the play, as well as several adaptations. Each translator was an important figure in Slovene literature and/or literary translation, the translations were often widely discussed, and at least three of them marked the beginning and the end of an era.Hamlet, and with it Shakespeare, truly arrived in Slovenia only about century ago when the first complete translations were staged in the emerging Slovene theatres. But the immediately engaged the Slovene expert public, who felt the wait had been much too long. Over the following decades it won over general audiences as well, to the point where it was called a true Slovene folk play by one of its translators, leading theatre figure of his time. Although its almost mythological status dwindled to that of mere classic after while, it did, as true folk should, accompany the Slovene audience through all crucial periods in the recent history of the nation: it was the first staged after World War I, the last before the theatres closed for World War II, it was on during the critical season of 1947/48 when Yugoslavia broke with the USSR, and again in 1990 just before Slovenia became independent.1 At first it was known only to the German-speaking intellectuals; later, through several productions and translations, it became part of the general knowledge of the population; and today its place is as classic among other classics, which, as we shall see, marks considerable decline in its status.In the BeginningWhen Shakespeare wrote his plays, the Habsburg-ruled regions of today's Slovenia were undergoing the Catholic Anti-Reformation, and the only theatre was passion plays staged by the Jesuit monks in Latin. This situation remained more or less unchanged for the next century, but at the end of the eighteenth century, the first pieces on Shakespeare and his plays were written, beginning with Anton Tomaz Linhart, one of the leading Slovene intellectuals of the late eighteenth century and the author of the first theatre plays in the Slovene language.The season of 1779/80 saw Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and King Lear in the German Theatre of Ljubljana. Even though they were adapted versions, and in German, those performances did give the German-speaking Slovene public (high school students and intellectuals) an opportunity to become familiar with Shakespeare and his plays. The Slovene lands were briefly included in Napoleon's Illyrian Provinces from 1809 to 1814. After the French left the region, the German Theatre reopened, but Shakespeare disappeared from its stage for almost half century, as the theatre favoured German authors.In spite of that, all the leading authors and experts on the emerging Slovene cultural scene knew and wrote about Shakespeare. Liberals such as the philologist Matija Cop, the poet France Preseren and the writers and theoreticians Fran Levstik and Josip Stritar wrote in favour of Shakespeare, while the more conservative writers were against such indecent theatre. The more liberal group, however, were the authors who shaped the emerging Slovene literature, and it is thought that at least Levstik (one of the most important literary theoreticians of the period) was strongly under Shakespeare's influence, which, according to some authors, even prevented the development of Slovene drama (Koblar 187).Although those writers and theoreticians knew and respected Shakespeare, they did not try to translate any of his texts, apart from one unpublished attempt by Josip Jurcic, protege of Levstik and traditionally considered the first Slovene novelist. But in the second half of the nineteenth century there were many less prominent Slovene intellectuals who did. The first was student from Maribor, Ivan Vrban-Zadravski, who translated and published the second scene from Romeo and Juliet. …

RECLAIMING THE VOICE OF THE ‘THIRD WORLD WOMAN’

While conservative Somali writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a widely recognized and acclaimed figure in the West, she has generally been ignored or derided by postcolonial feminists. This has largely been due to her extremely provocative and often offensive statements regarding Islam and Muslim immigrants in the West. While Hirsi Ali is clearly problematic, in this essay I argue that engagement with her is both necessary and useful. On the one hand, an examination of Hirsi Ali's success shows the implication of a particular discourse that postcolonial feminists have unwittingly endorsed: namely an essentialized and overly celebratory positioning of the authentic ‘Third World woman's voice’. On the other hand, I argue that critical engagement with Hirsi Ali also opens up interesting sites of rejuvenation for postcolonial feminism and a means of developing a more nuanced and truly decolonized anti-racist, feminist politics.

Some Gays and the Queers

Some Gays and the Queers

Emasculating Fear: Gothic and Gender in Caroline de la Motte Fouqué’s Der Cypressenkranz

In the wake of the Wars of Liberation, many conservative female writers, including Caroline de la Motte Fouque, addressed what they perceived as a crisis of masculinity. Fouque’s Gothic text Der Cypressenkranz (1816) can be read within the context of contemporary concerns regarding gender ambiguity. This article will explore Fouque’s use of the Gothic mode to articulate the anxiety and fear surrounding the perceived loss of masculinity. Fouque’s employment of Gothic motifs, which were well established by the time of the text’s publication, is innovative in her ability to establish and subsequently undermine genre expectations. Der Cypressenkranz therefore constitutes a unique contribution to German Gothic literature and to contemporary discussions of masculinity.

Now That Historians Know So Much about the Right, How Should We Best Approach the Study of Conservatism?

Kim Phillips-Fein’s review is a thoughtful survey of the last fifteen years of historical scholarship on conservatism in the United States. She recounts how a once-marginal set of questions moved to center stage and produced an avalanche of studies. As a contributor of one such study of conservatism, I am gratified to have the importance of this effort recognized in several flagship journals. The result of all this scholarly effort, Phillips-Fein notes, has been nothing short of a transformation in our understanding of the post– World War II American Right and to a lesser degree the longer tradition of American conservatism. Without a doubt, Alan Brinkley’s influential 1994 call in the American Historical Review for more attention to conservatism has been answered. Fifteen years later, Phillips-Fein’s essay prompts us to ask: Were any of the answers surprising? 1 Thanks to this effort, postwar conservatism has become, to borrow John Lewis Gaddis’s formulation, a history “we now know.” As Phillips-Fein notes, this knowledge has come from many different perspectives. We have rich portraits of the local communities where postwar conservative culture blossomed. We have comprehensive portrayals of the women and men who made up the social base of the libertarian and Christian Right. We have biographies of the leaders of the conservative movement as well as close examinations of major conservative organizations, networks, mobilizing tools, and the relationship of all this activity to the Republican party. We now have a greater understanding of modern conservative religiosity, including, for example, that evangelicalism—once thought of as appealing to men and women within rural, backwater, and poor regions— flourished in the hypermodern, privatized world of postindustrial, affluent suburbs. We have penetrating portraits of how within our modern era’s vast corporate empires of lowwage, nonunion service industries was born a powerful new grassroots theology of equal parts free-market capitalism and staunch evangelicalism. Conservative writers too, whose work was once dismissed as little more than “impulses,” “mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas,” have been richly elucidated in their multiple strands. Finally, the new

Watergate's Legacy and the Press: The Investigative Impulse

Nearly forty years after the Watergate break-in, the legacy of that scandal continues to cast a shadow on politics and the press in Washington, D.C. How did this happen? What role did journalism play in President Richard M. Nixon's resignation? What changes in investigative reporting preceded and followed Watergate? And what does this portend for the future? These are the questions addressed in this lucid, well-researched book. In truth, journalism's precise role in Nixon's demise is impossible to measure definitively. To the conservative writer Paul Johnson, the “Watergate witch-hunt” was “run by liberals in the media,” especially the Washington Post, and led to “the first media Putsch in history”. The television anchorman Dan Rather also viewed the media's role as pivotal—but heroic: “The record clearly shows that the [Watergate] cover-up would have worked if the press hadn’t done its job.” Academics hold a more jaundiced view. “Television and newspapers publicized the story and, perhaps, even encouraged more diligent investigation,” the historian Stanley Kutler found, but media revelations of crimes and political misdeeds repeated what was already known to properly constituted investigative authorities. In short, carefully timed leaks, not media investigations, provided the first news of Watergate.

American political affiliation, 2003–43: A cohort component projection

The recent rise in identification with American political parties has focused interest on the long-term dynamics of party support. Liberal commentators cite immigration and youth as forces that will produce a natural advantage for the Democrats in the future, while conservative writers highlight the importance of high fertility amongst Republicans in securing growth. These opinions are not based on demographic analysis. We addressed this omission by undertaking the first ever cohort component projection (up to 2043) of populations by American party allegiance, based on survey and census data. On current trends, we predict that American partisanship will change much less than the nation's ethnic composition because the parties are similar in age structure. Nevertheless, our projections suggest that the Democrats will gain 2–3 per cent more support than the Republicans by 2043, mainly through immigration, although the higher fertility of Republicans may eventually offset that advantage.

Edward Hyams: Ecology and Politics 'Under the Vine'

This paper offers an assessment of the agricultural eco-politics of Edward Hyams (1910-75), novelist, gardener, historian, broadcaster and anarchist. It focuses in particular on his collaboration with the conservative writer on rural England, and founding member of the Soil Association, H.J. Massingham which resulted in a book, Prophecy of Famine (1953) - a fundamental critique of the effects of industrial capitalism on farming and a call for agricultural self-sufficiency and soil conservation. This collaboration between two writers with very different political views raises important questions about the nature of eco-politics and whether its critique of the dominant ideology of 'progress' (at least in its historicist forms) can still constitute a radical 'progressive' politics. Hyams' writings, and his differences from Massingham, particularly over the issue of private ownership of land, are illustrative of this apparent tension.

Revolutionary Subjects in the English "Jacobin" Novel, 1790-1805 (review)

Reviewed by: Revolutionary Subjects in the English "Jacobin" Novel, 1790-1805 Amy Garnai (bio) Miriam L. Wallace . Revolutionary Subjects in the English "Jacobin" Novel, 1790-1805. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2009. 314pp. US$65. ISBN 978-0-8387-57050-5. In recent years, an increasing number of critical studies have dealt with the intersection of politics and literature in Britain during the 1790s and the first years of the nineteenth century. Examining in particular the literary engagement with the upheavals brought about by the French Revolution, these studies often focus on texts that had in their own time contributed to the "Revolution debate" from both sides of the political spectrum but were later marginalized or neglected. Miriam L. Wallace's book is an important contribution to this work of cultural recovery, including insightful and probing analyses both of understudied literary texts and more familiar ones, as well as a sophisticated theoretical framework in which to view them together. Building on the foundational work of Gary Kelly, Marilyn Butler, and those who followed in their footsteps, Wallace's book provides a unique and compelling perspective on the cultural landscape of the period. As acknowledged in the title, Wallace situates the idea of subjectivity as an organizing theme for her discussion. She argues that the "dual status [of political subjects] as entities made through subjection to ideology and state power and as linguistic subjects, self-constituted through representational activity [is] particularly pertinent for this founding literary moment" (17) of the emergence of the British reformist novel. She lucidly unpacks the various ways in which subjectivity is articulated; [End Page 438] by the concluding chapter we can see not only how the 1790s was a historical moment conducive to its emergence as a politically freighted category but also how this recognition of a dual subjectivity is highly relevant to our own time. Among the many strengths of this book is Wallace's repeated emphasis on the relevance of eighteenth-century reformist discourse to the issues of human rights, agency, and political action that continue to preoccupy us today. For example, her discussion of Mary Hays's 1799 novel The Victim of Prejudice examines rape and trauma narratives from both historical and contemporary theoretical perspectives in order to show not only the limited possibilities for the articulation of female trauma—and female subjectivity—within the novel's own purview, but also the ways in which trauma can be rewritten and given expression through an "active witnessing by a future, unnamed sympathetic reader" (146). Central to Wallace's argument is the rejection of the divisions that underpin many current studies of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature, divisions that enforce binary oppositions and an exclusivity of focus in regard to gender as well as politics, and which "leave out the complex relations among radical and more conservative writers and between female- and male-authored texts" (19). The works under consideration in Revolutionary Subjects reflect the diversity and complexity of the writing of this period. While substantial attention is given to texts that fit seamlessly into a study of the progressive, reformist novel—William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, Robert Bage's Hermsprong, Eliza Fenwick's Secresy, Thomas Holcroft's Anna St. Ives and The Memoirs of Bryan Perdue, and Mary Hays's Emma Courtney and The Victim of Prejudice—Wallace also examines more ideologically nuanced works, including Charles Lloyd's Edmund Oliver, Amelia Opie's Adeline Mowbray, and, in a particularly bold move, Elizabeth Hamilton's Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. The chapter discussing Lloyd and Opie, to my mind the strongest chapter in the book, convincingly locates these writers' works as "conservative reformist novels" (187) whose political positioning includes criticism of some of the more overt reformist principles and the support of others. Wallace's application throughout her study of the Godwinian distinction between "moral" and "tendency"—that is, a work's overt aim as opposed to the availability of possible alternative readings—is especially useful for identifying this ideological ambivalence. Thus, Edmund Oliver and Adeline Mowbray can be viewed as novels whose "moral" lies in the critique of excessive sensibility and the "new philosophy" that...

The Forgotten Nationalist: John Mitchel, Race, and Irish American Identity

The Forgotten Nationalist:John Mitchel, Race, and Irish American Identity David T. Gleeson (bio) Bryan P. McGovern . John Mitchel: Irish Nationalist, Southern Secessionist. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2009. xviii + 293 pp. Appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $36.00. Bryan McGovern has provided a long-overdue modern biography of the Irish nationalist John Mitchel. Mitchel, the son of a Unitarian minister from County Derry, became the premier propagandist of Irish nationalism in the mid-nineteenth century. His life and his polemic influenced both the Irish in Ireland and in the United States. In the U.S., he, in a sense, set the tone of Irish American nationalism for generations. Long after his death, Mitchel was feted in Irish nationalist circles for his virulent anti-British propaganda. Admirers wrote a number of biographies and kept his books in print on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet, after the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Mitchel the man, if not his rhetoric, fell into disfavor. One can put this disconnect between Mitchel and his work down to his strong support for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War and for its "cornerstone," slavery. He thus became something of an embarrassment to more progressive revolutionary nationalists of the later twentieth century even as they continued to use his propaganda in their anti-British campaigns during the latter-day "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. McGovern's scholarly effort here is to be welcomed—especially as there is no major collection of John Mitchel papers, only some scattered letters. As his subtitle suggests, McGovern pays a lot of attention to the most neglected aspect of Mitchel's life, the time he spent in America, particularly in the South. He begins, however, with good coverage of Mitchel's early life in Ireland and his rise to prominence there. The first issue dealt with ably is how the Protestant Mitchel could have such interest in and appeal to Irish Catholics when sectarianism in Ireland was on the rise. Mitchel's father, fitting his embrace of Unitarianism within the Ulster Presbyterian tradition, had a very liberal attitude toward Catholics. The young Mitchel was imbued with this tolerance and would retain it throughout his life, even to the point of accepting the [End Page 658] conversion of his daughters to the Roman Catholic faith and of one of them entering the Catholic sisterhood. McGovern believes that Mitchel always held an ecumenical dream that Irish people would bury their denominational differences and focus more on national unity. The other big influence on Mitchel's early life was Thomas Davis, a fellow Protestant and the spiritual father of Irish cultural nationalism in the 1840s. Mitchel supported Davis' view that a "Young Ireland" could resurrect a dormant Celtic and Irish national identity. After Davis' death in 1845, Mitchel became more radical in his nationalism. Part of his radicalism, somewhat ironically, came from his admiration for the Scottish conservative writer and scourge of the liberal industrial age, Thomas Carlyle. Mitchel overcame Carlyle's anti-Irish writings to endorse his critique of the modern era (Carlyle came to admire Mitchel, too, despite the younger man's strong Irish nationalism). McGovern pays good attention to this relationship but also recognizes that Mitchel moved beyond Carlyle's mere reactionism. Mitchel came to recognize that the whole system of landholding in Ireland (where a tiny Anglican elite owned the vast majority of land) needed to be overthrown and that violent rebellion against British rule in Ireland was the only way to achieve this. The massive death and dislocation of the Great Famine, which began in 1845, pushed Mitchel in this direction. He began to see even his former colleagues in Young Ireland, who did not disavow violence but did not advocate it either, as hopelessly misguided moderates. He split from them in early 1848 and founded his own weekly newspaper, The United Irishman, named for the purveyors of the last major rebellion against British rule back in 1798 (The Society of United Irishmen). Inspired by the February revolution in Paris, Mitchel called publically for armed rebellion. The authorities moved quickly and preemptively arrested him, charged him with treason, and sentenced him to death. This...

Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present

Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present

Between tradition, innovation and Utopia: Haydn’s mehrstimmige Gesänge

Haydn’s mehrstimmige Gesänge , composed between 1796 and 1799, have mostly been given but scarce attention by scholars. In this paper I strive to re-contextualize the partsongs both as regards Haydn’s own oeuvre and the history of the genre in general. I argue that, while the composer may have been aware of the male quartets by his brother Michael, and was certainly familiar with the English glee tradition, his partsongs consciously seek to redefine the genre by raising its compositional, as well as performing, standards to a uniquely high level (hence the word “utopia” in my title). While the composer’s aim appears to have been to set an example by exploring diverse artistic possibilities of the genre, the reception of his partsongs proved highly selective: the religious songs were praised as worthy models by conservative writers, whereas the comic pieces puzzled critics with their combination of highly elaborate music and resolutely lowbrow texts, which did not seem to deserve, as it were, such compositional care. Thus, the reception of the partsongs reinforces a common Haydn stereotype of the early 19th century: he is seen as a master of outstanding originality and compositional skill, whose achievements can only be admired, but whose example is not always to be followed.