Languages of the Night

Download or read book Languages of the Night written by Barry McCrea and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.