AESTHETICS AND POLITICS :INTERNATIONAL INTELLECTUALS AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

AESTHETICS AND POLITICS
Spring 2020
ESSAY QUESTIONS

Essay Extension: 3500 words

1.- D. Sanders argues that For Whom the Bell Tolls is undoubtedly a non-political novel. Do you agree? Discuss.
2.- Consider the importance of Helen Graham’s concept of the “culture wars” for an understanding of the Spanish Civil War as a European war.
3.- “Thus in the decade of the 1930s the pressures imposed by the Spanish Civil War- to write in a manner unambiguously extolling Franco or the Republic so as to increase their support abroad- came into conflict with the tentative, subjective approach that now seemed the mark of “truth””. (Wilkinson, 14). Discuss in relation to Spanish Civil War Diary AND/OR Homage to Catalonia.
4.- International intellectuals’ vision of Spain and its Civil War was blurred by the romanticism of the literary traveller, stunned, as Carr puts it, “by the contrast between supposed Spanish simplicity and sincerity and the complex compromises and materialism of life at home” (73). Discuss with reference to TWO texts discussed in class.
5.- Discuss the representation of the Spanish people in TWO texts or authors discussed in class.
6.- Compare and contrast the representation of war-related violence in TWO texts discussed in class.
7.- “For many thousands of people, Homage to Catalonia is the only book on the Spanish Civil War that they will ever read. So, it is not a question of demeaning Orwell but rather of raising awareness that the views expressed in his book are often wrong because they are based on insufficient information and prior prejudice.” (Preston, 28-29). Discuss.

8.- In what ways can we say that Flowering Rifle reveals Roy Campbell as a fascist?
9.- Compare and contrast the role of the Catholic church as represented in TWO texts or authors seen in class.
10.- “Moments where a modernist text foregrounds its technique […] and moments of linguistic or textual non-transparency open up the text not just away from reality but also toward critique” (Berman, 25). Discuss with relation to For Whom the Bell Tolls and Homage to Catalonia.
11.-“Race […] played an immensely important role in the [Spanish Civil] war […] and Hugues’s […] writings on Spain are crucial to the understanding of the racial underpinnings of the war.” (Ugarte, 108, 113). Discuss.
12.- “The photographic archive of the Spanish Civil War, in which even the apparently most documentary images underwent some form of manipulation, confronts us with fundamental questions about history, memory and truth.” Discuss in relation to photographs by Robert Capa and posters of the Spanish Civil War.
13.- Susan Sontag accused photographers of being voyeurs, and called taking pictures an “act of non-intervention” that has an interest in leaving the status quo unchanged and is “in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting […], including [..] another person’s pain and misfortune” (in Rudner, 137). Discuss in relation to Robert Capa.
14.- Is Blockade a political film? In your answer refer to the film’s filmography, plot and what Smith calls “extended text of the film” (19).