Overview

This book argues that the sudden decline of old rural vernaculars such as French patois, Italian dialects, and the Irish language caused these languages to become the objects of powerful longings and projections that were formative of modernist writing. Sean O Riordain in Ireland and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Italy reshaped minor languages to use as private idioms of poetry; the revivalist conception of Irish as a lost, perfect language deeply affected the work of James Joyce; the disappearing dialects of northern France seemed to Marcel Proust to offer an escape from time itself.Drawing on a broad range of linguistic and cultural examples to present a major reevaluation of the origins and meaning of European literary modernism, Barry McCrea shows how the vanishing languages of the European countryside influenced metropolitan literary culture in fundamental ways.

Full Product Details

9781336030763

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

Barry McCrea is the Keough Family Chair of English, Comparative Literature and Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame and teaches at the university's campuses in Indiana, Dublin, and Rome.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available