Irish in Italy: Exhibition Launch

Launch of the Irish in Italy Exhibition

by Prof. Anne O’Connor and Dr Adrian Paterson

Welcome address by Antonio Bibbò, Daniel Carey, and Marco Gioacchini

The concept of Ireland emerges at critical moments in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century, with Irish politics entering national debates and contributing to a better understanding of the specificity of Irish culture and literature in Italy. At the start of the century and until the early 1920s, Irish literature was primarily identified with the Celtic Revival, with few minor exceptions. The “Irishness” of writers such as Stoker, Wilde and Shaw generally passed unnoticed, while Joyce, who spent a substantial part of his life in Trieste, was chiefly seen as a cosmopolitan writer. It was only thanks to a number of passionate scholars, translators, historians, that the Italian public was made more aware of the intricacies of Irish literature and started perceiving it as a separate entity within the system of literatures in English.

The exhibition offers a picture of this complex relationship and of the interactions between the literary landscape and the political system which characterised, and often facilitated, exchanges between the two nations. Irish in Italy displays several important documents such as letters by Pavese, Montale, Yeats, Linati, as well as rare first editions of Irish literary works in Italian.

You can view the online exhibition at: Irish in Italy