Milli mála - 2020, Blaðsíða 195
Milli mála 12/2020 195
ANGELA RAWLINGS, LARA W. HOFFMANN, RANDI W. STEBBINS
10.33112/millimala.12.7
2. Migration, Multilingualism and Democracy
in Publishing
The author and translator Tim Parks has written about what he calls
the “Dull Global Novel”20 in contemporary literature, meaning a ten-
dency of writers to write in ways aimed at removing every obstacle to
international comprehension. One example of this type of literature
Parks mentions is the Japanese bestselling author Haruki Murakami.
In contrast to the dull global novel, the body of research that will be
discussed in this section emphasizes the use of multiple languages in
literary works. While not every work of multilingual writing is at the
same time migrant literature, these two genres often intersect due to
language being a central aspect of immigrants’ involvement in the
host society. Studies on multilingual writing and migrant literature
have primarily been conducted in larger language communities with
longer histories of immigration, as the examples discussed here dem-
onstrate.
Albert Rossisch has described that literature that uses more than
one language breaks with the idea of monolithic concepts such as
“French Literature” or “Italian Literature.” Rossisch emphasizes the
“the radical anomaly of certain texts – those which use more than one
language – that simply cannot be fitted into a specific tradition be-
cause they voluntarily straddle two or more literatures.”21 Even
though Rossisch does not mention Icelandic literature, the idea of
multilingual literature as a way of breaking with literary traditions is
particularly relevant when considering the close links between na-
tional identity and the Icelandic language.
Yasemin Yildiz22 offers a similar perspective and suggests that the
field of literary studies should go beyond the monolingual paradigm,
which she sees as the dominant perspective of scholars of literature
until recent years. Yildiz discusses a number of examples from post-
monolingual German literature using more than one language. She
20 Parks, Tim, “The Dull Global Novel”, Where I’m Reading From: The Changing World of Books,
Tim Parks, New York: New York Review Books, 2015, pp. 25–28, here p. 25.
21 Rossich, Albert, “An Overview of Literary Multilingualism”, Comparative Critical Studies, 1/2018,
pp. 47–67, doi: 10.3366/ccs.2018.0259, here p. 50.
22 Yildiz, Yazemin, Beyond the Mothertongue. The Postmonoligual Condition, New York: Fordham
University Press, 2012.