Dr Denis Topalović, Murray Edwards
dt589@cam.ac.uk
Biographical Information
Dr Denis Topalović is Isaac Newton Trust Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College. He obtained his D.Phil from the University of Oxford in 2024, where he was jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Clarendon Fund, and Magdalen College. His D.Phil thesis, Untimely Forms: Late Modernism, War, Essayistic Form, explored the emergence across twentieth-century Europe of a literary mode he calls ‘long-form essayism’, focusing on works by British, Italian, and German authors.
His current research seeks to understand how a widespread interest in ideas and practices of 'attention' shaped the literary culture of the early- to mid-twentieth century.
He received several prizes and awards for his research, including the Charles Bernheimer Prize (American Comparative Literature Association) and Swapna Dev Memorial Prize (University of Oxford) for best doctoral dissertation.
Research Interests
- literary essays and essayism
- war writing
- literature of/in Trieste
- comparative literature
- European modernisms
Selected Publications
Monographs
Untimely Forms: Late Modernsim, War, Essayistic Form (in preparation, Oxford University Press).
Journal Articles
'The Rings of Sarajevo: W.G. Sebald and the Bosnian War', Journal of Modern Literature, 48.4 (Summer 2025), 93-110.
'Cyril Connolly, Late Modernism and the Essay Form', Textual Practice, Spring 2025.
'"A form insane": Speaking Ideas in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon', ELH: English Literary History, 93.3 (forthcoming, Fall 2026).
Book Reviews
'Review of Modernism in Trieste: The Habsburg Mediterranean and the Literary Invention of Europe, 1870-1945 by Salvatore Pappalardo', OCCT Review (May 2021).
