The fourteenth-century poet John Gower was a prodigiously Ovidian author, especially throughout his Latin Vox clamantis and English Confessio amantis. It is in the Vox clamantis, and its first book the Visio Anglie, where Gower fully engaged with Ovid in exile, and where he became the Ovidian exile in the ways theorised in Chapter 4. While Gower did not experience exile or marginalisation in real life, in the Visio he inhabits Ovidian exile to respond to the 1381 Uprising. Menmuir firstly speculates how Gower might have read Ovid’s exile poetry. She also considers different theoretical approaches to Gower’s use of Ovid, including cento. Thereafter, the chapter progresses sequentially through the Visio, charting Gower’s range of approaches to the exilic Ovid. At the opening of the Visio, Gower compresses prevailing themes of the exile poetry. Chapter 16 of the Visio is the height of Gower’s Ovidian exilic inhabitation, where Gower shifts to speaking in a first-person voice. The storm at sea in the Visio is drawn from Ovid in exile. Finally, a voice from Heaven speaks to the Gowerian narrator but is in fact a mouthpiece for Ovid in exile.

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 form Part II of this book, which turns to later medieval poets who became the Ovidian exile in some way, especially by inhabiting an Ovidian exilic voice. Chapter 4 is a manifesto for this theory of voice, drawing particularly on David Lawton’s concept of ‘public interiorities’. The first section of this chapter surveys the medieval and modern theories of voice which help us understand how Gower, Chaucer and other medieval authors conceptualised voice. The core of a theory of vox is Aristotle, whose ideas were developed in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Next, the chapter considers medieval respondents who used Ovid’s exilic voice well before the fourteenth century. It focuses especially on Modoin (d. c. 840) and Baudri of Bourgueil (c. AD 1046–1130) as representative of the classicising of the Carolingian Renaissance and the ‘Loire School’, respectively. These writers engaged productively with Ovid’s exilic voice but did not inhabit it in the same way that Gower and Chaucer did. The third and final section of this chapter asks why Gower and Chaucer, writing in fourteenth-century Ricardian London, were impelled to ‘become’ Ovid in exile in a new way.

The rise of the far-right is a global phenomenon connected with the erosion of liberal democracy, especially in Europe and North America. It is not surprising that scholars are paying increasing attention to the ideas defended by the far-right and the factors that help to explain its electoral support. However, most research tends to focus on individual countries or regions, neglecting cross-regional perspectives crucial for understanding the diffusion of far-right ideas and political strategies. To fill this void, this contribution delves into the Foro Madrid, a novel transnational advocacy network primarily composed of far-right political entities. Spearheaded by VOX, a Spanish populist radical right party, the Foro Madrid seeks to forge an alliance between Europe and Latin America to counterbalance perceived leftist influences. By analyzing the Foro Madrid’s rhetoric and strategies, the chapter aims to demonstrate a deliberate dissemination of far-right ideas from north to south. The empirical findings shed light on this diffusion process and its potential ramifications for liberal democracy. Moreover, the chapter reflects on the implications of this dissemination, contemplating its impact on liberal democratic norms and structures.

This chapter analyzes the complex interplay of economic and cultural issues that provoked discontented movements on both the left and right in Spain. Initially, resentment over EU-backed austerity policies allowed the left-populist Podemos party to break into Spain’s party system. But the rise of a populist left that embraced multiculturalism, exacerbated by continuing economic struggles, provoked a powerful reaction on the other side of the aisle when Catalonia attempted to declare independence. This threat to national unity led to the reemergence of right-wing nationalism in the form of a new radical right political party, VOX. Using original data collected as part of the Political Systems Attitudes Study, the chapter shows that support for VOX was driven primarily by cultural discontent, but as argued throughout the book, cultural discontent itself was driven by the ongoing economic crisis.

This chapter analyses Spain’s mainstream conservative party, the Popular Party (PP). Of the two revolutions analysed in the book – the silent and silent counter-revolutions – the Popular Party only confronted the former for several decades. In general, it adapted to a more liberal society by moderating to capture centrist voters in the 1990s without losing far right voters, thereby remaining hegemonic on the right. Midway through the subsequent decade, Spain’s two main parties, the Socialist PSOE and PP, moved further apart on post-materialist and centre–periphery issues. Today, PP is severely weakened and ideologically sandwiched between two right-wing party challengers, the more centrist Citizens and the far right Vox. This political fragmentation is due to a favourable opportunity structure for the rise of new parties after 2010 – related to the Great Recession, political corruption and the push for independence in Catalonia. In this context, PP was unable to retain its diverse electorate. It now confronts dilemmas similar to those of many of its European counterparts, and the party’s initial response to the rise of Vox was to move rightward and accommodate it as an ally.