Modernism and the Making of Contemporary Europe is a new lecture and podcast series at MoLI which will explore the ways in which modernist literature, art and culture has been rewritten, repurposed and revalued in twenty-first century Europe.
Featuring presentations and conversations with commentators, critics and scholars from around the globe, this series will engage the ways in which modernism has become significant to contemporary European aesthetics, heritage and identity.
Jean-Michel Rabaté is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Since 2008, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science. He is a founding member of the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia (slought.org), and one of the managing editors of Journal of Modern Literature. Rabaté has authored or edited more than 40 books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
In this talk, Jean-Michel Rabaté returns to Friedrich Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations to explore the idea of a new European identity which became central to modernism. Rabaté will zoom in on Joyce's interpretation of Nietzsche to show how Ulysses and Finnegans Wake propose a new Europe concerned with democracy, hospitality and pluralism. And he will consider the legacy of this thought in contemporary writers such as Sally Rooney and Yannick Haenel.
The series is presented by Dr John Greaney, School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, and supported by the project Contemporary Modernisms, funded by Taighde Éireann / Research Ireland.
