In December 2011 an international conference took place in Oxford to
celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Italo Svevo, and to take
stock of the continuing influence exerted by his work at the start of
the third millennium. With over 100 participants from all over the
world, the conference represented a unique moment of reflection and
exchange of ideas among the foremost Svevo specialists. Resulting from
that meeting, the 38 papers included in this two volume publication
represent the cream of current scholarship on one of the best known (in
Italy and abroad) among the Italian writers at the turn from the 19th to
the 20th century. Svevo's masterpiece, La coscienza di Zeno (1923), was
one of the most significant Modernist novels, admired by the likes of J.
Joyce, T. Mann and E. Montale, and has become one of the major narrative
works in the Italian language. Taking advantage of the unique richness
of the cultural background of its Triestine author and drawing
abundantly from the Germanic philosophical tradition (Schopenhauer in
particular), the novel was also one of the very first works of fiction
to dialogue with Freudian discourse and with Darwinian theories, at the
same time effecting a true revolution in terms of literary style; its
legacy (as shown by several contributors) is visible in terms of direct
and indirect influence on many Italian and non-Italian writers in the
course of the 20th century, and beyond. These two volumes will be an
indispensable companion to the work of all those (students, teachers,
researchers, or simple readers) who wish to understand the momentous
transformations taking place in Italy and in Europe at the dawn of the
past century and leading to the two World Wars and the shaping of new
models of society. Svevo's work is not only a mirror of his own time
from an unusual and particularly revealing perspective, but also an
exceptionally lucid analysis of the fundamental questions elicited by
those changes, and their effects on human behaviour.
