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Podcast: New Books in Italian Studies
Episode: Salvatore Pappalardo, "Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe, 1870-1945" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Description: When we think about the process of European unification, our conversations inevitably ponder questions of economic cooperation and international politics. Salvatore Pappalardo offers a new and engaging perspective, arguing that the idea of European unity is also the product of a modern literary imagination. This book examines the idea of Europe in the modernist literature of primarily Robert Musil, Italo Svevo, and James Joyce (but also of Theodor Däubler and Srecko Kosovel), all authors who had a deep connection with the port city of Trieste.Writing after World War I, when the contested city joined Italy, t...