This article explores the concept of ‘Europe’ by using it as a synecdoche for ‘modernity’. The point of departure is Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's postulate that one can distinguish two Europes and two modernities. Modernity is, on the one hand, the historical tendency towards totalization and exclusion, and, on the other hand, the opposite penchant for fragmentation and anarchic ‘liberative’ thinking. On the basis of this duality, one can talk of a syndrome of modernity, a cultural condition that is determined by the coincidence of two views on sovereignty (self-coercion and self-determination). The article relates the theory of ‘two Europes’ to three historical forms of cultural identity and in particular to the ideals of normality which are involved in them.

From the late 1870s until his death in 1901, the Irish physicist G. F. Fitzgerald was one of the most active and influential proponents of Maxwell's theory of the electromagnetic field. Along with Oliver Lodge, Oliver Heaviside, Heinrich Hertz, and other ‘Maxwellians’, Fitzgerald took the lead in extending Maxwell's theory, clarifying its expression, and subjecting it to experimental test. The surviving correspondence of this Maxwellian circle provides a window into the workings of late Victorian physics and into the private side of scientific communication.

In his celebrated 1888 experiment on standing waves, Hertz found the velocity of transmission along a wire line to depend on wavelength and to differ from that for wireless transmission, a result that was in contradiction to theory. Hertz called on others to repeat the experiments and verify or refute his results. The call was heard by two groups of scientists. In Dublin, George Francis Fitzgerald and associates repeated and elaborated Hertz's experimental discoveries. For wire transmission, their results were in good agreement with those of Hertz. On the other hand Édouard Sarasin and Lucien de la Rive of Geneva obtained the results required by theory. Hertz looked for an explanation of his own results in the ambient conditions of his apparatus. He corresponded with both Fitzgerald and with the Genevan scientists. These letters are an important historical source in reconstructing the circumstances of Hertz's experiment.

As the discipline of Comparative Literature expands beyond its traditional concentration on the literatures of a few European great powers, our expanded range of vision involves rethinking Europe itself as well as the larger global production of literature. Already in the 19th century, comparatists were deeply engaged in sorting out relations between major powers and minor literatures, as can be seen in the ambitious early journal Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, edited in the 1870s by the Transylvanian comparatist Hugo Meltzl. This article discusses Meltzl's journal and its struggles against the great-power cosmopolitanism represented by Meltzl's rival, the German comparatist Max Koch. As an illustration of the importance of trans-national perspectives in understanding European identity, the article concludes with a discussion of the recording of pagan myth in medieval Iceland.

While George Francis Fitzgerald is celebrated today primarily for his contributions to theoretical physics, especially Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, his correspondence demonstrates that he was driven as much by a passion for new technologies and their potential to change the world as by the mathematical explanations that made him famous. He experimented with a wide range of technologies, educated a generation of engineers at Trinity College Dublin and advocated the importance of technical education for Ireland's future prosperity. But during his own lifetime, he struggled to convince the public of what many today believe to be self-evident – namely, that progress in industry depends on university-educated scientists and engineers and that every good university requires a well-equipped research laboratory. His dream for Ireland of prosperity through education, science and industry would not be realized until almost 90 years after his death.