Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney 2014 Individual chapters © Contributors 2014 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–41213–3 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Commemorating writers in nineteenth-century Europe : nation-building and centenary fever / edited by Joep Leerssen, Professor, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Ann Rigney, Professor of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University, Netherlands. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN pal 1. European literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Collective memory and literature. 3. Nationalism and literature. 4. Authors—Monuments. 5. Literary landmarks. I. Leerssen, Joseph Th. (Joseph Theodoor), 1955– editor. II. Rigney, Ann, editor. PN761.C57 2014 809'.034—dc23 2014020361 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 9781137412133_1_prexvi.indd iv 18-07-2014 16:56:36 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xii Notes on the Contributors xiii Introduction: Fanning out from Shakespeare 1 Ann Rigney and Joep Leerssen 1 Schiller 1859: Literary Historicism and Readership Mobilization 24 Joep Leerssen 2 Burns 1859: Embodied Communities and Transnational Federation 40 Ann Rigney 3 Scott 1871: Celebration as Cultural Diplomacy 65 Ann Rigney 4 Moore 1879: Ireland, America, Australia 88 Ronan Kelly 5 Dante 1865: The Politics and Limits of Aesthetic Education 102 Mahnaz Yousefzadeh 6 Petrarch 1804–1904: Nation-Building and Glocal Identities 117 Harald Hendrix 7 Petrarch 1874: Pan-National Celebrations and Provençal Regionalism 134 Francesca Zantedeschi 8 Voltaire 1878: Commemoration and the Creation of Dissent 152 Pierre Boudrot 9 Vondel 1867: Amsterdam–Netherlands, Protestant–Catholic 173 Joep Leerssen 10 Conscience 1883: Between Flanders and Belgium 188 An De Ridder 11 Pushkin 1880: Fedor Dostoevsky Voices the Russian Self-Image 203 Neil Stewart 12 Prešeren 1905: Ritual Afterlives and Slovenian Nationalism 224 Marijan Dovic´ vii Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 9781137412133_1_prexvi.indd vii 18-07-2014 16:56:36 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 viii Contents 13 Mácha, Petőfi, Mickiewicz: (Un)wanted Statues in East-Central Europe 250 John Neubauer 14 Cervantes 1916: Literature as ‘Exquisite Neutrality’ 262 Clara Calvo 15 Whose Camões? Canons, Celebrations, Colonialisms 283 Paulo de Medeiros Index 295 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 9781137412133_1_prexvi.indd viii 18-07-2014 16:56:36 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 Introduction Fanning out from Shakespeare Ann Rigney and Joep Leerssen Bardolatry Samuel Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare’s works (1765) represented a land- mark in the canonization of the bard, presenting him as an original genius on a par with Homer and the benchmark authors of classical antiquity. In the pref- ace, Johnson raised Shakespeare to the dignity of an ‘ancient’ – what nowadays we would call a ‘classic’ – someone whose fame and canonicity are beyond the vicissitudes of passing fashions. As Johnson put it, ‘it would not be easy to find any authour, except Homer, who invented so much as Shakespeare, who so much advanced the studies which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age or country. The form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the English drama are his’ (Johnson 1995, 3, 38). Johnson’s edition had itself been heralded in the previous year by the cele- bration of the bicentenary of Shakespeare’s birth, but this was a compara- tively low-key affair compared with the ones which were to follow – most immediately in 1769, when the celebrated actor David Garrick organized a fresh round of bicentennial festivities at Stratford-upon-Avon. The dignified pomp and pathos of this occasion involved cannon salutes, the ringing of church bells, a production of Garrick’s celebratory pageant The Jubilee, and the singing of a hyperbolic anthem of praise, Soft Flowing Avon. All of this would be trumped, however, by the lavish tercentenary of 1864, which involved a major exhibition and festival at the Crystal Palace in London along with public celebrations at Stratford and in other parts of the Anglophone world, from New York to Calcutta (Foulkes 2006; Quinault 1998). A half-century later again, the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death was celebrated in 1916 against the background of the First World War. It involved, alongside multiple publications and literary gatherings across the Empire, a major exhibition in London called ‘Shakespeare’s England’ that ran for six months. This gave a material shape to the historical links between Shakespeare, Tudor England, colonization, and the British Empire by including a reduced- scale Tudor village (designed by Edwin Lutyens, architect of New Delhi and 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 9781137412133_2_intro.indd 1 18-07-2014 06:48:10 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 2 Ann Rigney and Joep Leerssen later of the Cenotaph) and a replica of Drake’s ship, the Revenge, on which the sighting of the Armada was re-enacted at regular intervals, alongside a replica of the first Globe Theatre, at which excerpts from Elizabethan and Jacobean plays were performed three times a day while actors among the audience impersonated apprentices, orange girls, and other typical Elizabethan playgo- ers (Kahn 2001, 463). As part of such extravagant public expressions of appreciation, the memory of Shakespeare also generated multiple busts, statues, and paintings. These augmented his textual legacy by visual and plastic representations that were displayed in and on buildings, as well as in parks and streets. Garrick had commissioned two busts and a ‘Shakespeare Gallery’ (exhibiting paintings taken from the various Shakespeare plays), which opened at Pall Mall in London in 1789 with a relief in its front wall (taken down in 1871) showing Shakespeare attended by the muses of painting and poetry. At the 1864 cele- brations at the Crystal Palace a bust of Shakespeare presided over events, with a permanent public ‘national monument’ following in 1871 at Stratford. Indeed, these various ways of cultivating Shakespeare’s memory often worked together in a multimedia layering of text and image. The Shakespeare Gallery on Pall Mall (Pape and Burwick 1996) gives an idea: with the sculp- tural relief in its front wall, it was intended as a public venue in a publicity drive to canvass subscriptions for a sumptuously and lavishly illustrated new ‘works’ edition; the many dozens of paintings on show (the number grew in the years 1789–1805) were meant as samples of the engravings that would adorn the publication, and which were themselves distributed in book form as A Collection of Prints, from Pictures Painted for the Purpose of Illustrating the Dramatic Works of Shakspeare, by the Artists of Great-Britain (1805). Choral anthems, literary effusions and performances marking anniversaries, public concourses, public subscriptions, a relief sculpture, paintings, work editions, picture books: these were all feedback loops in the self-amplifying multime- dia perpetuation of an author’s celebrity and canonicity. This intense commemorative investment helped to establish and continu- ously amplify Shakespeare’s position as a key figure in the canon of English literature and a recognizable part of public life, indeed as a benchmark for canonicity itself. Thus Carlyle celebrated Shakespeare in On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840) as a ‘hero’ in the classic- mythological sense of the word, denoting a demigod fundamental to the nation’s existence, even more enduringly important to England’s identity than the country’s colonial possessions. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million of Englishmen would we not give-up rather than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our honour among for- eign nations, as an ornament to our English Household, what item is Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 9781137412133_2_intro.indd 2 18-07-2014 06:48:10 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–41213–3 Introduction 3 there that we would not surrender rather than him? Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire or your Shakspeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakspeare? Really it were a grave question.