In a joint event with the OCCT Review, we hosted one of the journal’s contributors, Denis Topalović, who discussed his review of Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe by Salvatore Pappalardo.
As Topalović suggests, "it would be hard to overstate the timeliness of a work that explores the literary invention of Europe at a time when the very question of ‘what it means to be, or who gets to be, European’ has come under such renewed pressure. That is what Salvatore Pappalardo’s Modernism in Trieste does: casting its net over a period that stretches from the fin de siècle to the Second World War, Modernism in Trieste interrogates how literary modernism ‘invented’ a united, nonnational Europe avant la lettre."
In this session we explored issues and debates centred around modernism, nationalism, geography, and European identity. Topalović’s review is available here. In addition, the editors of the OCCT Review provided a brief introduction to the Review, and explained how research students and early-career researchers can get involved.
Denis Topalović is a DPhil student at the Faculty of English, University of Oxford.
