Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe, 1870-1945

by Salvatore Pappalardo, Imke Meyer (Editor)

Overview

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, these authors resisted the easy nostalgia of the postwar period, radically reimagining the origins of Europe in the Mediterranean culture of the Phoenicians, contrasting a 19th-century nationalist discourse that saw Europe as the heir of a Greek and Roman legacy. These writers saw the Adriatic city, a cosmopolitan bazaar under the Habsburg Empire, as a social laboratory of European integration. Modernism in Trieste seeks to fill a critical gap in the extant scholarship, securing the literary history of Trieste within the context of current research on Habsburg and Austrian literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501369957
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/22/2022
Series:	New Directions in German Studies
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Salvatore Pappalardo is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Towson University, USA, where he teaches courses that range from the ancient Mediterranean to modern world literature. His research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century European literature, Austrian and Italian modernism, and Mediterranean Studies.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Trieste and the European Project: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics

1. The Adriatic Sea as a Phoenician Mediterranean, 1870-1925

2. A Mediterranean Monarchy: Robert Musil and the Politics of Non-National Loyalty, 1913-1943

3. Trojan Trieste: Italo Svevo and the Aesthetics of Austro-Italian Liminality, 1890-1923

4. Habsburg Hybrid: James Joyce and the Ethnolinguistics of Hiberno-Punic Mythography, 1904-1939

Conclusion: The Danube Flows into the Mediterranean
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

'[T]his is a brilliant and insightful study of modernist literature and politics unified by the complex culture of Trieste. Having previously read the works by Magris, Musil, Joyce, and Svevo that Pappalardo analyzes, I found many of his observations so revelatory that I hope to returban to these authors in the future. I can think of no greater praise for a book of literary criticism." —Italian Quarterly

"Modernism in Trieste is a thoroughly enjoyable read, pulling together a diverse cast of characters and illuminating the Habsburg legacy for European consciousness from a stimulating range of ethic, national, cultural and linguistic perspectives—Austrian, German, Italian, Slavic, Jewish and even Irish. Pappalardo succeeds admirably in his stated goal of reclaiming Trieste for Austrian and Habsburg studies ... It will be read profitably by all those interested in thinking creatively about the Habsburg legacy for Europe." - Jourbanal of Austrian Studies

“In this highly inventive and refreshing book, Pappalardo does much to unsettle the common terms and categories that have defined most thinking about Europe. He follows the underexplored and unique history of Trieste, a city that reads like a palimpsest of most every force, ideology, community, and invasion of European history since antiquity. Pappalardo masterfully replots the ways we think about modernist and avant-garde writing in the twentieth century. The familiar axes for thinking about Europe matter less, and the periphery is more than a feeder for major sites, as Trieste becomes a clash of irreconcilable human stories that-Pappalardo reveals-almost had to yield radical aesthetic experimentation.” —Gayle Rogers, Professor and Chair of English, University of Pittsburgh, USA

“Salvatore Pappalardo's Modernism in Trieste offers a compelling and creative re-imagining of Central Europe, uncovering the centrality of Phoenician myths of Europa to the core of literary modernism in Trieste. It transcends the nationalist paradigm to render non-national accounts of Central Europe legible by reclaiming a thalassologic past of Phoenician origin, recounted in literary visions of the Habsburg Mediterranean. Tracing the literary currents of Svevo, Musil, Joyce, Magris and others running through Trieste, the innovative approach at once challenges the predominance of German landedness at the heart of Central European studies and reorients literary modernism in Adriatic, Italian, and Central European studies, emphasizing Phoenician rather than Greco-Roman roots in the Habsburg literary legacy.” —Maura Hametz, Professor of History and Academic Unit Head, James Madison University, USA

“Salvatore Pappalardo's superb Modernism in Trieste brings together major discourses on the Mediterranean, Europe, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Orientalism, Classicism, and Modernism, through the important prism of Trieste and its literatures. Focusing on Robert Musil, Italo Svevo, and James Joyce, Pappalardo both examines how these authors' literary imagination challenged xenophobic nationalism and sheds new light on their works. Concentrating on the development of modernism from 1870-1945, his sophisticated analysis of the ambiguities of the rhetoric about European cosmopolitanism provides a rich new historical context for this important topic.” —Saskia Ziolkowski, Assistant Professor of Romance Studies, Duke University, USA

From the Publisher