The Life of Pietro Pettinaio presents problems akin in some respects to those raised by that of Raimondo Palmario. The original Latin version by the Franciscan Pietro da Montarone was written in 1330, over forty years after the death of the saint. The manuscript was lost in a fire at San Francesco in the sixteenth century, but by 1507 it had been translated into Italian by Serafi no Ferri, an Augustinian hermit of Lecceto near Siena, and in this form it was printed in 1529. In 1802 Maestro de' Angelis, a Sienese Franciscan, republished this Italian text, embellishing it with footnotes mostly of a doctrinal and devotional character. Pietro had sought out surviving witnesses to Pier's life and presents him as an exemplar of a particular kind of holy life, lived by a layman under the aegis of the Franciscan order and firmly embedded in the urban society around him.

This chapter analyses The Faerie Queene’s images of Elizabeth I in detail. It acknowledges that grotesque caricature is not necessarily closer to what ‘Spenser really thought’ than idealisation, and finds that both distortions can be equally funny. Distinguishing between veiled, critical satire and the more self-inclusive tendencies of Spenserian humour, it argues that while Elizabeth I is not exempt from comic treatment in The Faerie Queene, neither is Spenser himself. Perhaps in recognition that his own ambitions as a poet depended upon panegyric, Spenser’s images of the queen often incorporate elements of self-satire.

Sam Edwards describes the period 1890–1925 as the first age of transatlantic memory diplomacy, a period in which the potential of commemoration as a mechanism through which to strengthen Anglo-American ties was first explored. Focusing on British efforts to re-Anglicize George Washington, he analyzes the placement of a new statue of the first US president outside London’s National Gallery as well as the rededication and memorialization of Sulgrave Manor, Washington’s ancestral family estate in Northamptonshire. Of particular interest to Edwards is the agency of both government elites and private associations, particularly the US National Society of Colonial Dames, and he perspicaciously dissects the intersections of gender roles, racial constructs, social class, strategic objectives, and patriotic identities that determined the goals and methods of commemoration in this era.

The Life of Umiliana de' Cerchi was written by the Franciscan Vito of Cortona, in 1246, the year of the saint's death. However, it contains references to several later events, for example a vision of the saint which another member of the Florentine Franciscan community, Fra Buonamico, experienced in July 1247. Several of the miracle stories implicate individuals who are mentioned among Umiliana's associates in the Life. They thus amplify the picture of the pious network of which the saint formed a part during her lifetime. The witness-list which prefaces the Life is headed by the names of three Franciscans: Fra Michele, Umiliana's confessor and confidant; Vigor, another friar of Cortona; and Buonamico of Florence. Umiliana lived the feminine version of the Franciscan life to perfection, but the important thing was precisely that she did so, not enclosed in a convent, but living in a room in her father's tower.

This chapter describes how four men of different religious views and temperaments, Charles Kingsley, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Frederick W. Faber, and John Henry Newman, could define the Virgin Mary in such a way that they could construct a masculine self-identity in opposition to, or in conjunction with, the woman they envisioned. Individually these men offer proof that, while religious differences allowed the Marian debates to occur, the debates would not have been possible without the Victorian preoccupation with defining either gender as distinct from the other. They and the other Victorians whose voices are heard in this chapter show us that a Virgin Mary who was a source of controversy reveals far more about Victorian culture than does the passive model of domesticity scholars have assumed her to be.

This chapter looks at Paris, the exiled residence of Fernando Arrabal, and at two films that Arrabal directed, ¡Viva La Muerte!/Long Live Death! and L'arbre de Guernica/The Tree of Guernica. A former member of the Paris Surrealist Group and co-founder of the experimental theatre group Panique, Arrabal drew on his childhood experiences in Spanish-controlled North Africa during the 1930s to create two searing, surrealist-inspired films melding autobiography and history. This discussion also explores the efficacy of his deployment of shock tactics as an attempt to provoke a political response from the audience.

David Ryan assesses the ways in which the Western military interventions in Kosovo (1999) and Iraq (2003) were influenced by Anglo-American efforts to manipulate collective memory. Explaining how narratives of the special relationship employed by British prime minister Tony Blair and US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were augmented by civilizational discourse and memories of past Anglo-American partnership, Ryan demonstrates how strategic concerns, foreign policy, and domestic politics were shaped by systems of meaning that had the ability to both empower and constrain, and bind or blind, British and American leaders.

This chapter examines how oppositional filmmakers in Spain presented alternative views to the official state narrative during the dictatorship's latter years, focusing on the work of Carlos Saura, particularly La caza/The Hunt and El jardín de las delicias/Garden of Delights. It looks at how filmmakers, unable to deal directly with their subject matter due to censorial constraints, employed metaphorical and allegorical filmmaking to comment obliquely on the conflict.

The introduction contextualizes the substance of Culture Matters in three sections. The first section locates the book within important debates about the history of the special relationship and illuminates why an expanded consideration of culture is important to the field. The second section introduces the main ideas and benefits of the ‘cultural turn’ in diplomatic history and international relations, which has operationalized culture as a key to understanding the behavior of states in the global system and inspired diverse analytical approaches. Finally, the third section explains the volume’s structure and central themes as well as introduces the individual chapters, which illuminate the mosaic of cultural connections that have simultaneously influenced elite decision-making and sculpted popular attitudes toward and expectations of the special relationship.

This chapter presents John Bourne's view of the British army as a collection of self-contained battalions. Each battalion in the Irish regiments had its own separate and unique disciplinary record. During the past fifteen years, research into the British army during the Great War has expanded enormously. There has been a decisive move away from the stale debates of the 1920s and 1930s over British generalship during the conflict, and the war and society school of military history has been firmly embraced by many able historians. With regard to Irish regiments, historians have been well served. The disbandment of the Southern Irish regiments in 1922 created an impetus for the histories of these units to be written, and officers who had served in these units during the Great War provide an abundance of primary material.

This chapter presents an overview of the Spanish Civil War and describes different films that tackle the issue. It focuses on fictional feature films produced within Spain and beyond its borders between the 1940s and the early years of the twenty-first century, and attempts to situate the analyses within contemporary debates on Spanish Civil War historiography, the philosophy of history and the relationship between the past and its cinematic representation. The Spanish Civil War began on July 17 1936 when a right-wing rebellion organised from Spanish military garrisons in North Africa and the Canary Islands was launched against a left-leaning Republican government. It ended with the rebels proclaiming victory on April 1 1939.

This chapter contains translated and annotated sources discussing the period October 1399 to February 1400 during the reign of Richard II.