Modernist Diarists Writing Unstable Selves

Objective

MoDi will produce the first comparative study of European writers' diaries specifically focused on the early 20th century and self- expression. It explores if and how modernist writers adapted the novel ideas on personality, particularly the 'crisis of the self' described by philosophy from the end of the 19th century onwards, in private writing. The diary genre provides an ideal testing ground for this topic, as it inhabits a threshold between life and art which can provide narrative coherence for a disintegrated self and enter in a productive relationship with a modernist aesthetic of fragmentation and plurality. MoDi offers an unprecedented comparison of English, French, and Italian personal diaries of modernist writers with each other and with earlier diary classics, and analyses the results in light of end-of-century theories of personality. Its overall aim is to find out whether it is possible to identify a generationally-specific 'modernist' diary, whose mode of self-expression changed when ideas about the self changed. It will thus provide an innovative perspective on how self-writing evolved in decades of intellectual ferment, open a new field of comparative diary scholarship in a transnational perspective, and provide groundbreaking material to explore the diary's powers of self-formation. Completing MoDi will allow the fellow to strengthen her competence in critical theory and develop a methodology to handle an extensive corpus, becoming a specialist in comparative modernist diary studies and laying the foundations for an independent research career. The dissemination of MoDi's research results among academic and non-academic audiences will promote private writing as a resource to negotiate personal and collective identity and to encourage self-awareness of cultural specificities and cross-cultural affinities, contrasting stereotypes and contributing to creating the social and ideological conditions for a more inclusive, respectful, and resilient society.