Salvatore Pappalardo

This book shows how literary modernism challenged the rise of xenophobic nationalism in early twentieth-century Europe. Electing the Phoenicians, rivals of Greeks and Romans, as the foundation of a more inclusive Mediterranean Europe, modernists in Trieste subverted a widespread nationalist rhetoric. They ascribed to Trieste the role of cultural mediator, seeing the port city as an urban experiment for a future United States of Europe. The grant will support writing during summer 2019.