Languages Of The Night: Minor Languages And The Literary Imagination In Twentieth-Century Ireland And Europe

This provocative book shows how the mass abandonment of rural vernaculars (such as the Irish language, Italian dialects, and French patois) shaped European literary modernism. Seán Ó Ríordáin in Ireland and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Italy reshaped minor languages as experimental poetic idioms; the decline of the Irish language deeply affected the work of James Joyce; the disappearing dialects of northern France were a source of complex inspiration for Marcel Proust. 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 a genuinely comparative analysis can force us to rethink national literary traditions.

• | Author: Barry McCrea
• | Publisher: Yale University Press
• | Publication Date: Apr 28, 2015
• | Number of Pages: 200 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0300185154
• | ISBN-13: 9780300185157