1st Edition

Multilingual Currents in Literature, Translation and Culture

Edited By Rachael Gilmour, Tamar Steinitz Copyright 2018
    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    At a time increasingly dominated by globalization, migration, and the clash between supranational and ultranational ideologies, the relationship between language and borders has become more complicated and, in many ways, more consequential than ever. This book shows how concepts of ‘language’ and ‘multilingualism’ look different when viewed from Belize, Lagos, or London, and asks how ideas about literature and literary form must be remade in a contemporary cultural marketplace that is both linguistically diverse and interconnected, even as it remains profoundly unequal. Bringing together scholars from the fields of literary studies, applied linguistics, publishing, and translation studies, the volume investigates how multilingual realities shape not only the practice of writing but also modes of literary and cultural production. Chapters explore examples of literary multilingualism and their relationship to the institutions of publishing, translation, and canon-formation. They consider how literature can be read in relation to other multilingual and translational forms of contemporary cultural circulation and what new interpretative strategies such developments demand. In tracing the multilingual currents running across a globalized world, this book will appeal to the growing international readership at the intersections of comparative literature, world literature, postcolonial studies, literary theory and criticism, and translation studies.

    Chapter 1: Introduction



    Rachael Gilmour and Tamar Steinitz



    Chapter 2: Writer Speaks with Forked Tongue: Interlingual Predicaments



    Steven G. Kellman



    Chapter 3: The Worlds of Québec: On Post-Bilingualism, Multidirectionality, and Other Critical Detours



    Christopher Larkosh



    Chapter 4: Narrating the Polyphonic City: Translation and Identity in Translingual/Transcultural Writing



    Rita Wilson



    Chapter 5: "Ah’m the man ae a thoosand tongues": Multilingual Scottishness and its Limits



    Rachael Gilmour



    Chapter 6: Language Choices in Belizean Literature: The Politics of Language in Transnational Caribbean Space



    Britta Schneider



    Chapter 7: We Need New Names: Novel and Reading Publics as Conduits for Producing Contradictions



    Carli Coetzee



    Chapter 8: Translation as a Motor of Critique and Invention in Contemporary Literature: The Case of Xiaolu Guo



    Fiona Doloughan



    Chapter 9: Literary Adventures in Francophone Afropea: Léonora Miano and Music as a Language of Afro-Diasporic Subjectivity



    Polo Belina Moji



    Chapter 10: Translation and the Multilingual Text: Defining a Public



    Moradewun Adejunmobi



    Chapter 11: Afterword



    Paul F. Bandia





    Notes on Contributors

    Biography

    Rachael Gilmour is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Queen Mary, University of London, UK.





    Tamar Steinitz is Lecturer in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.