Eloquent silence: the transformation of Spain in British balladry between the Peninsular War and the Carlist Wars

Authors

  • J. Rubén Valdés Miyares University of Oviedo

Keywords:

Broadside ballads, popular culture, 19th-century literature, war poetry, British interventionism in Spain

Abstract

Among the ten items labelled “Peninsular War ballads” in the website Broadside Ballads Online of the Bodleian Libraries two evidently date from the First Carlist War, and show a different mood. The remaining eight items related to the 1807-1815 period are actually only five, as two of them are different editions of the same songs, and another is merely about the setting in the Horse Guards Parade, London, of a memorial to the lifting of the siege of Cádiz in 1812. While the five true Peninsular War ballads represent it as a patriotic enterprise on behalf of brave Spaniards fighting tyrannical invaders, the two set in the Carlist War portray a more individualized adventure of soldiers of fortune. This new approach after 1815 suggests a more limited popular understanding of Spanish politics. Spain is no longer a scenario for the defence of universal principles, but for the reckless adventure of particular men.

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Author Biography

J. Rubén Valdés Miyares, University of Oviedo

Senior lecturer in English at the University of Oviedo

References

Atkinson, David. The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.

Dendle, Brian J. “The Romance of War, or, The Highlanders in Spain: The Peninsular War and the British Novel.” Anales de Literatura Española 7 (1991): 49-64. https://doi.org/10.14198/ALEUA.1991.7.03

Donaldson, William. The Jacobite Song: Political Myth and National Identity. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988.

Greene, Graham. “Alfred Tennyson Intervenes.” Spanish Front: Writers on the Civil War. Ed. Valentine Cunningham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986 (1937). 67-69.

“Peninsular War, 1807-1814.” Broadside Ballads Online. The Bodleian Libraries. Web. 5 March 2016.

<http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/theme/Peninsular%20war,%201807-1814>

Sola Pinto, Vivian de, and Allan Edwin Rodway. The Common Muse. An Anthology of Popular British Ballad Poetry 15th-20th Century. London: Chatto & Windus, 1957. PMCid:PMC1973726

The Poet’s Box. A Glasgow Collection of Broadsides. The Glasgow Herald 17 (8 March 1926). Web. 5 March 2016.

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Zavala, Iris. “La censura en la semiología del silencio: siglos XVIII y XIX.” Censura y Literaturas Peninsulares. Ed. Manuel L. Abellán. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987. 147-157.

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Published

2016-12-23

How to Cite

Valdés Miyares, J. R. (2016). Eloquent silence: the transformation of Spain in British balladry between the Peninsular War and the Carlist Wars. The Grove - Working Papers on English Studies, 23. Retrieved from https://revistaselectronicas.ujaen.es/index.php/grove/article/view/2856

Issue

Vol. 23 (2016): The Grove. Working Papers on english studies

Section

Articles

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