Academic literature on the topic 'Lissa, Battle of, 1866, in art'

This study is a contribution to the research of the extensive topic of Dostoevsky and Garibaldi and is an analysis of two fragments from Dostoevsky's texts, where he addressed the image of the Italian hero. This image is reflected in the artistic, journalistic and epistolary texts by Dostoevsky, his name is calligraphically printed on the pages of two of the writer's notebooks. The article analyzes an episode from the novel "The Idiot": the story of the liar and braggart General Ivolgin about his wound during the Crimean War that was treated by two outstanding surgeons – the Frenchman O. Nelaton and the Russian N. I. Pirogov. It is shown that the subtext of Ivolgin's story refers to the story of Garibaldi's wound in the battle of Aspromonte and the treatment of his leg by O. Nelaton and N. I. Pirogov, which Dostoevsky and his hero learned about from the newspapers. The European and Russian press, which closely followed the political events in Italy and Europe in the 1860s, created a heroic image of this man. The second reference to Garibaldi is from Dostoevsky's Geneva letter to his niece S. A. Ivanova dated January 1 (13), 1868. It presents a parody sketch of contemporary political events and figures in Italy (Cardinal Antonelli, General Kanzler, the defeat of Garibaldi's army at the Battle of Mentana). They are allegorically transferred to the games and amusements of the younger generation of the Ivanov family, with whom the writer spent the summer of 1866. The article corrects the error made by the publishers of Dostoevsky's letters: the title of "general kanzler" (this is how this phrase was published) never existed — in the Battle of Mentana, the supreme commander of the papal troops, which defeated Garibaldi, was General Hermann Kanzler, who had a German origin and surname. The cases considered indicate a significant interest of the writer in the heroic personality of Giuseppe Garibaldi, his activities and fate.

Chapter 1 treats Zola’s long career as a literary and cultural critic from its early days in the 1860s through to 1897, just before his engagement in the Affair. It concentrates on three polemical ‘battles,’ each separated from the next by around fifteen years, which defined his career and illustrate the origin of the arguments that Zola would redeploy during the Affair itself. These are: the battle of the Salon of 1866, when Zola outraged the Parisian art world with vehement defenses of Manet’s painting; the battle of literature against politics, when he attacked Republican politicians hostile to the success of his novels around 1880; and the battle of the bankruptcy of science in the mid-1890s, when he responded to critics who alleged science’s inability to answer moral questions or provide meaning to modern life. The chapter offers a micro-historical panorama of some of the major questions preoccupying French society between 1860 and 1900, as well as preparing the reader to understand Zola’s pro-Dreyfus engagement.