On Thursday 7th September at 6.30pm, the exhibition “Irish in Italy” curated by Antonio Bibbò (University of Trento) has been launched in the spaces on the first floor of our Institute.
The opening of the exhibition coincides with the launch of the first edition of FIILI – Festival of Italian and Irish Literature in Ireland organized by this Institute together with Irish PEN, Literature Ireland, the Department of Italian at Trinity College Dublin, the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, the Society of Italian Studies and curated by Enrica Ferrara and Catherine Dunne.
“Irish in Italy” exhibition illustrates the complex relationship and interactions between the literary landscape and the political exchanges between the two nations.
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
Organized with the patronage of the University of Trento and the collaboration of the Italian Cultural Institute in Dublin
Location: 1st Floor rooms
Free access
The Exhibition will be open for visits until the 17th November 2023 on weekdays from 10 am to 1 pm and from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm. Free admission.
Reservation no longer available