Barry McCrea, professor of comparative literature and English at the University of Notre Dame, presents his new book: Languages of the Night: Minor Languages and the Literary Imagination in Twentieth-Century Ireland and Europe, at 18.00 on Thursday 19 November.

In this book, McCrea draws on a broad range of linguistic and cultural examples to present a major reevaluation of the sources and meanings of European literary modernism. He shows how metropolitan literary culture was fundamentally shaped by the vanishing vernaculars of the European countryside.

The Irish ambassador to Italy, Bobby McDonagh, will be present.