Literature – Multilingual on Principle?! The Political Potential of Literary Multilingualism Today, using the Example of Barbi Marković’s Superheldinnen. Research on literary multilingualism is increasingly based on the assumption that literature per se is multilingual. This is true for concepts such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘polyphony’, in which multilingualism occurs in the form of social, regional and historical variants within one major language. Similarly, it applies to Rainier Grutman’s concept of hétérolinguisme, which expands Bakhtin’s notion and includes actual language changes. Recently, Till Dembeck has even called for a philology of multilingualism that would accommodate literary multilingualism in literary criticism. Using Barbi Marković’s novel Superheldinnen (2016) as an example, I discuss this recent development in multilingual literary studies and analyse concepts, forms and function of literary multilingualism. In so doing, I underline the transcending character of literary multilingualism that expresses itself on various levels: linguistically, formally, medially and with respect to culture. Thus, I aim to illustrate the enormous political potential of literary multilingualism. In fact, multilingualism in literature, as opposed to literature in times of a “monolingual paradigm” (Yasemin Yildiz), poses a political challenge on various levels. Concepts, such as national literature, literary field, but also literary studies and their institutions (i.e. language departments) reach their limits if literature is understood as being multilingual. In the second part of this article, I discuss the difficulties that come with literary prizes, literary studies and the access to the literary field. These often express themselves as concrete problems for individuals who, for instance, have difficulties accessing the literary field.
{"title":"Literatur – grundsätzlich mehrsprachig!? Das politische Potenzial literarischer Mehrsprachigkeit heute, am Beispiel von Barbi Marković’ Superheldinnen","authors":"Sandra Vlasta","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"Literature – Multilingual on Principle?! The Political Potential of Literary Multilingualism Today, using the Example of Barbi Marković’s Superheldinnen. Research on literary multilingualism is increasingly based on the assumption that literature per se is multilingual. This is true for concepts such as Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘polyphony’, in which multilingualism occurs in the form of social, regional and historical variants within one major language. Similarly, it applies to Rainier Grutman’s concept of hétérolinguisme, which expands Bakhtin’s notion and includes actual language changes. Recently, Till Dembeck has even called for a philology of multilingualism that would accommodate literary multilingualism in literary criticism. Using Barbi Marković’s novel Superheldinnen (2016) as an example, I discuss this recent development in multilingual literary studies and analyse concepts, forms and function of literary multilingualism. In so doing, I underline the transcending character of literary multilingualism that expresses itself on various levels: linguistically, formally, medially and with respect to culture. Thus, I aim to illustrate the enormous political potential of literary multilingualism. In fact, multilingualism in literature, as opposed to literature in times of a “monolingual paradigm” (Yasemin Yildiz), poses a political challenge on various levels. Concepts, such as national literature, literary field, but also literary studies and their institutions (i.e. language departments) reach their limits if literature is understood as being multilingual. In the second part of this article, I discuss the difficulties that come with literary prizes, literary studies and the access to the literary field. These often express themselves as concrete problems for individuals who, for instance, have difficulties accessing the literary field.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66672752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-31DOI: 10.12697/il.2021.26.1.14
Farin Engels
Multilingualism in Education in Germany – a Discourse Analysis. In the Republic of Germany, language acquisition for children with a mother tongue other than German has been a widely discussed topic in education science as well as in public and political discourse over the last decades. Annual studies on preschool and primary education point to the ongoing disadvantage – or even discrimination – suffered by multilingual children in the German education system. Given Germany’s history as a country of immigration, and in light of recent public discussions on the increased immigration of refugees, the question of the problematic’s socio-political background arises. This leads to the issue of linguistic concepts among society and their influence on domestic language policies. This article presents analysis of discourse around languagepolitical concepts and practices among stakeholders in language promotion in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Five semi-structured interviews with state employees were analysed following a discourse analytical approach. The analysis, deploying frameworks from the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, focused on the discursive practice of legitimation in the evaluation of multilingualism. Multilingualism as a phenomenon in society appeared to be evaluated according to differing standards (for example correctness or properness) depending on the language. As for evaluation, the analysis indicated an additional dimension in discourse which assigns different groups of speakers a belonging to particular languages. All in all, the collected data pointed to a diverse and ever-changing discourse in the field of language promotion in North-Rhine Westphalia. The presented analysis aims to stimulate a debate and suggests some directions for future research.
{"title":"Mehrsprachigkeit in der Bildung in Deutschland – eine Diskursanalyse","authors":"Farin Engels","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.14","url":null,"abstract":"Multilingualism in Education in Germany – a Discourse Analysis. In the Republic of Germany, language acquisition for children with a mother tongue other than German has been a widely discussed topic in education science as well as in public and political discourse over the last decades. Annual studies on preschool and primary education point to the ongoing disadvantage – or even discrimination – suffered by multilingual children in the German education system. Given Germany’s history as a country of immigration, and in light of recent public discussions on the increased immigration of refugees, the question of the problematic’s socio-political background arises. This leads to the issue of linguistic concepts among society and their influence on domestic language policies. This article presents analysis of discourse around languagepolitical concepts and practices among stakeholders in language promotion in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Five semi-structured interviews with state employees were analysed following a discourse analytical approach. The analysis, deploying frameworks from the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, focused on the discursive practice of legitimation in the evaluation of multilingualism. Multilingualism as a phenomenon in society appeared to be evaluated according to differing standards (for example correctness or properness) depending on the language. As for evaluation, the analysis indicated an additional dimension in discourse which assigns different groups of speakers a belonging to particular languages. All in all, the collected data pointed to a diverse and ever-changing discourse in the field of language promotion in North-Rhine Westphalia. The presented analysis aims to stimulate a debate and suggests some directions for future research.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42061444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-31DOI: 10.12697/il.2021.26.1.16
Øyvind Rangøy
The creation of poetry with literary value in a non-native language often invites questions about how this is possible to achieve. This question, however, can be turned around: is there something in being an exophonic poet that, rather than being an obstacle, could make the development and maturing of a poetic language possible? Adam Zagajewski writes that ardor, not irony, can be primary building blocks, and about the ideal of being ‘in between’. Ben Lerner writes about the sources of Hatred of Poetry and sees poetry as a potential that can never be completely realised. Being between languages causes the reality of language as one of many possibilities to be always present. The result can be construed as a poetic of time and light, but also of a reconciliation at depth warranted by the poetic ethos. Language becomes aware of itself, its autonomy and inherent lack of objectivity, and this becomes less naive and prone to cliches, but this awareness need not spiral into self-dissolving irony. Rather, it may seek to reconcile the possible ways of seeing the world into a new sense of sincerity. It inspires creative and playful use of language, gives heightened awareness of possible metaphors even where the sense of the transferred image is absent within the framework of one language. This has the potential to change perception of language and reality in a way that makes poetry almost possible.
用非母语创作具有文学价值的诗歌经常会引发人们对如何实现这一目标的疑问。然而，这个问题可以扭转：作为一个外来诗人，有没有什么东西可以使诗歌语言的发展和成熟成为可能，而不是成为一个障碍？亚当·扎加杰夫斯基（Adam Zagajewski）写道，热情而非讽刺可能是主要的基石，也是“介于两者之间”的理想。本·勒纳（Ben Lerner）写了《诗歌的仇恨》（Hatred of Poetry）的来源，并将诗歌视为一种永远无法完全实现的潜力。语言之间的存在使得语言的现实性作为许多可能性之一始终存在。其结果可以被解释为一种时间与光的诗意，但也可以被解读为诗歌精神所保证的深度和解。语言意识到了它自己，它的自主性和固有的客观性的缺乏，这变得不那么天真和容易陈词滥调，但这种意识不必螺旋上升为自我消解的讽刺。相反，它可能会寻求将看待世界的可能方式调和为一种新的真诚感。它激发了对语言的创造性和趣味性使用，提高了对可能的隐喻的认识，即使在一种语言的框架内没有转移的图像感。这有可能改变人们对语言和现实的看法，使诗歌几乎成为可能。
{"title":"Train of Language, Train of Thought: Notes on an Exophonic Anomaly","authors":"Øyvind Rangøy","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.16","url":null,"abstract":"The creation of poetry with literary value in a non-native language often invites questions about how this is possible to achieve. This question, however, can be turned around: is there something in being an exophonic poet that, rather than being an obstacle, could make the development and maturing of a poetic language possible? Adam Zagajewski writes that ardor, not irony, can be primary building blocks, and about the ideal of being ‘in between’. Ben Lerner writes about the sources of Hatred of Poetry and sees poetry as a potential that can never be completely realised. Being between languages causes the reality of language as one of many possibilities to be always present. The result can be construed as a poetic of time and light, but also of a reconciliation at depth warranted by the poetic ethos. Language becomes aware of itself, its autonomy and inherent lack of objectivity, and this becomes less naive and prone to cliches, but this awareness need not spiral into self-dissolving irony. Rather, it may seek to reconcile the possible ways of seeing the world into a new sense of sincerity. It inspires creative and playful use of language, gives heightened awareness of possible metaphors even where the sense of the transferred image is absent within the framework of one language. This has the potential to change perception of language and reality in a way that makes poetry almost possible.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45605717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From Historical Legacy to Self-Determined Language(s) Policy? Literary Multilingualism in Lithuania and Latvia. The first part of this article looks at Soviet language(s) policy. Two further parts discuss language(s) policy and literary multilingualism in Lithuania and Latvia. The aim is not to provide a differentiated investigation, but to show similarities and differences as well as tendencies in the language(s) politics of the two states from the 19th century to the present in the mirror of literature and to explain them using case studies. In the fourth, concluding part, literary translation is highlighted as one of the formats for implementing multilingualism outside the text with particular focus on the consultative function of the Russian language.
{"title":"Vom historischen Erbe zur selbstbestimmten Sprach(en)politik? Literarische Mehrsprachigkeit in Litauen und Lettland","authors":"Natalia Blum-Barth","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.5","url":null,"abstract":"From Historical Legacy to Self-Determined Language(s) Policy? Literary Multilingualism in Lithuania and Latvia. The first part of this article looks at Soviet language(s) policy. Two further parts discuss language(s) policy and literary multilingualism in Lithuania and Latvia. The aim is not to provide a differentiated investigation, but to show similarities and differences as well as tendencies in the language(s) politics of the two states from the 19th century to the present in the mirror of literature and to explain them using case studies. In the fourth, concluding part, literary translation is highlighted as one of the formats for implementing multilingualism outside the text with particular focus on the consultative function of the Russian language.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44764816","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-31DOI: 10.12697/il.2021.26.1.21
Gabija Bankauskaitė, L. Huber
The twentieth century witnessed an abundant number of traumatic events related to dark history. Trauma caused by war, occupation, exile, repression, gave rise to migration or mass murder. To rely upon Cathy Caruth (1996: 3), the concept of trauma is understood as a physical wound; however, subsequently in medicine and the literature of psychiatry, especially in Freud’s works, the concept of trauma came to be understood as a psychological wound. In addition, trauma is not only a disturbing or stressful experience that affects an individual physically or psychologically, it may also be based on other factors created by society. Over time the field of trauma in various contexts expanded so that today it is widely used in sociology when analysing historical and cultural events. Cultural traumatic memory is mirrored in trauma fiction that conveys the experience of loss and suffering, there is a space for memories, introspection, recollections, flashbacks and awful remembrances that are colored by pain. Apart from individual, event-based trauma, there is another category of trauma variously called cultural or historical trauma, which affects groups of people. Numerous studies have been conducted on the latter topic, however, trauma and its expression in Lithuanian literature has not yet been sufficiently documented. The aim of this study is to discuss the concepts of cultural and historical trauma and the way trauma is reflected in Algirdas Jeronimas Landsbergis’ works. The authors of the study claim that Landsbergis – one of many Lithuanian writers-in-exile – wrote texts that fill a cultural vacuum and invite a re-discussion of what was most painful in the past.
{"title":"Trauma, Narrative and History: Representation of Traumatic Experience in the Works of Algirdas Landsbergis","authors":"Gabija Bankauskaitė, L. Huber","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.21","url":null,"abstract":"The twentieth century witnessed an abundant number of traumatic events related to dark history. Trauma caused by war, occupation, exile, repression, gave rise to migration or mass murder. To rely upon Cathy Caruth (1996: 3), the concept of trauma is understood as a physical wound; however, subsequently in medicine and the literature of psychiatry, especially in Freud’s works, the concept of trauma came to be understood as a psychological wound. In addition, trauma is not only a disturbing or stressful experience that affects an individual physically or psychologically, it may also be based on other factors created by society. \u0000Over time the field of trauma in various contexts expanded so that today it is widely used in sociology when analysing historical and cultural events. Cultural traumatic memory is mirrored in trauma fiction that conveys the experience of loss and suffering, there is a space for memories, introspection, recollections, flashbacks and awful remembrances that are colored by pain. Apart from individual, event-based trauma, there is another category of trauma variously called cultural or historical trauma, which affects groups of people. \u0000Numerous studies have been conducted on the latter topic, however, trauma and its expression in Lithuanian literature has not yet been sufficiently documented. \u0000The aim of this study is to discuss the concepts of cultural and historical trauma and the way trauma is reflected in Algirdas Jeronimas Landsbergis’ works. The authors of the study claim that Landsbergis – one of many Lithuanian writers-in-exile – wrote texts that fill a cultural vacuum and invite a re-discussion of what was most painful in the past.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43388402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-31DOI: 10.12697/il.2021.26.1.15
Anastasia Shakhova
The Lehesaju Muusika International Music and Poetry Festival in Tartu as a Specific Form of Cultural Mediation and Object of Analysis for Research on Multilingualism. The paper focuses on the multilingual discourse of the Lehesaju Muusika international music and poetry festival, which takes place annually in Tartu, Estonia. Being an international cultural event organised by ethnic minorities, Lehesaju Muusika represents a unique source of empirical data for research on multilingualism. The festival attracts songwriters and performers of the so-called ‘author song’ or ‘bard song’ not only from Estonia, but also from all over the world. The key feature of this genre is the dominance of the text over the music. The spatial organisation of a concert hall represents a specific power constellation within a microsocial structure. Performing artists have the power to decide in which language they perform and address the multilingual audience, while the audience itself has an indirect effect on this decision. The artist’s dialogue with the audience represents a peculiar discursive entity within the discourse of the festival. Code-switching appears to be one of the inherent characteristics of this discursive entity. The present paper summarises some key features of international music and poetry festivals as multilingual cultural events, focusing on the discourse of the Lehesaju Muusika festival. It offers a brief analysis of the audience’s language profile based on the results of a microsociological case study carried out during the latest festival, in 2019. To illustrate the complexity of the multilingual communication during the festival, three situations of code-switching during the performance of an Estonian native speaker in front of the multilingual audience are described and analysed.
{"title":"Das internationale Autorenliedfestival „Lehesaju Muusika“ in Tartu als spezifische Form der Kulturvermittlung und Analyseobjekt für Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung","authors":"Anastasia Shakhova","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.15","url":null,"abstract":"The Lehesaju Muusika International Music and Poetry Festival in Tartu as a Specific Form of Cultural Mediation and Object of Analysis for Research on Multilingualism. The paper focuses on the multilingual discourse of the Lehesaju Muusika international music and poetry festival, which takes place annually in Tartu, Estonia. Being an international cultural event organised by ethnic minorities, Lehesaju Muusika represents a unique source of empirical data for research on multilingualism. The festival attracts songwriters and performers of the so-called ‘author song’ or ‘bard song’ not only from Estonia, but also from all over the world. The key feature of this genre is the dominance of the text over the music. \u0000The spatial organisation of a concert hall represents a specific power constellation within a microsocial structure. Performing artists have the power to decide in which language they perform and address the multilingual audience, while the audience itself has an indirect effect on this decision. The artist’s dialogue with the audience represents a peculiar discursive entity within the discourse of the festival. Code-switching appears to be one of the inherent characteristics of this discursive entity. \u0000The present paper summarises some key features of international music and poetry festivals as multilingual cultural events, focusing on the discourse of the Lehesaju Muusika festival. It offers a brief analysis of the audience’s language profile based on the results of a microsociological case study carried out during the latest festival, in 2019. To illustrate the complexity of the multilingual communication during the festival, three situations of code-switching during the performance of an Estonian native speaker in front of the multilingual audience are described and analysed.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45592838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Intertwined Languages and Cultures: Gohar Markosjan-Käsper’s Novels as Examples of Multilingual Writing. The present article analyses the phenomenon of multilingualism in the novels of Gohar Markosjan-Käsper (1949–2015) and discusses her life and work in the socio-political context of the former Soviet Union (in relation to language and cultural politics). Markosjan-Käsper was an Armenian-born writer who spent most of her life in Estonia and wrote her books in Russian. Accordingly, her works originated in a contact zone of different languages and cultures. This article highlights her novels Helena and Penelopa as examples of transcultural writing and analyses the manifestations and functions of multilingualism in these works. The study shows that a number of topics and motifs that are present in German-language transcultural literature also appear in Markosjan-Käsper’s novels (for example cultural comparison, self-discovery in a foreign culture). The multilingualism can be seen in these novels both explicitly and implicitly: in addition to Russian, other languages such as Armenian, Estonian, English, and Latin are used, with numerous indirect references to these languages. Furthermore, various references to world-famous novels such as Ulysses by James Joyce and Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov are analysed.
{"title":"Verflochtene Sprachen und Kulturen: Gohar Markosjan-Käspers Romane als Beispiele des mehrsprachigen Schreibens","authors":"A. Heero","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.8","url":null,"abstract":"Intertwined Languages and Cultures: Gohar Markosjan-Käsper’s Novels as Examples of Multilingual Writing. The present article analyses the phenomenon of multilingualism in the novels of Gohar Markosjan-Käsper (1949–2015) and discusses her life and work in the socio-political context of the former Soviet Union (in relation to language and cultural politics). Markosjan-Käsper was an Armenian-born writer who spent most of her life in Estonia and wrote her books in Russian. Accordingly, her works originated in a contact zone of different languages and cultures. This article highlights her novels Helena and Penelopa as examples of transcultural writing and analyses the manifestations and functions of multilingualism in these works. The study shows that a number of topics and motifs that are present in German-language transcultural literature also appear in Markosjan-Käsper’s novels (for example cultural comparison, self-discovery in a foreign culture). The multilingualism can be seen in these novels both explicitly and implicitly: in addition to Russian, other languages such as Armenian, Estonian, English, and Latin are used, with numerous indirect references to these languages. Furthermore, various references to world-famous novels such as Ulysses by James Joyce and Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov are analysed.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45368465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.12697/il.2021.26.1.20
Toon Staes
Recent narrative studies of complexity theory have shown that so-called ‘emergent complexity’ does not accommodate to narrative form. Complexity theory is an interdisciplinary field of study that researches how large-scale phenomena emerge from simple components without the guidance of a plan or a controlling agent. Emergence happens by chance, through decentralised interactions at lower levels. Its lack of clear causal chains makes the process difficult to conceptualise in narrative so this article turns to a fictional narrative to demonstrate how complexity theory has trickled down into contemporary literature: the historical novel Pfitz (1995) by Scottish novelist and theoretical physicist Andrew Crumey. While there have been a spate of publications on complex narratives in film studies, literature studies has lagged behind. As a counter, the article revives Tom LeClair’s notion of the systems novel (1987, 1989) as one useful model for thinking about narrative complexity in prose fiction. I first turn to LeClair’s definition of the systems novel and bring it up to date with recent discussions of complexity theory, then turn to Crumey’s novel to illustrate how Pfitz imitates the logic of complex systems through its looping structure, its interconnectedness, and its thematic insistence on chance and necessity.
{"title":"Narrative Complexity and the Case of Pfitz: An Update for the ‘Systems Novel’","authors":"Toon Staes","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.20","url":null,"abstract":"Recent narrative studies of complexity theory have shown that so-called ‘emergent complexity’ does not accommodate to narrative form. Complexity theory is an interdisciplinary field of study that researches how large-scale phenomena emerge from simple components without the guidance of a plan or a controlling agent. Emergence happens by chance, through decentralised interactions at lower levels. Its lack of clear causal chains makes the process difficult to conceptualise in narrative so this article turns to a fictional narrative to demonstrate how complexity theory has trickled down into contemporary literature: the historical novel Pfitz (1995) by Scottish novelist and theoretical physicist Andrew Crumey. While there have been a spate of publications on complex narratives in film studies, literature studies has lagged behind. As a counter, the article revives Tom LeClair’s notion of the systems novel (1987, 1989) as one useful model for thinking about narrative complexity in prose fiction. I first turn to LeClair’s definition of the systems novel and bring it up to date with recent discussions of complexity theory, then turn to Crumey’s novel to illustrate how Pfitz imitates the logic of complex systems through its looping structure, its interconnectedness, and its thematic insistence on chance and necessity.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66672725","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Phenomena related to gastronomy form an important part of both individual and collective identities. The gastronomical dimensions of literature can often be perceived as a commentary on the political, historical and societal, going beyond just the food. As cuisines are becoming more mixed globally, languages describing gastronomical scenes in literature are also becoming more multilingual. The novel Mock Faustus (1973), by the Latvian writer Marģers Zariņš, fuses the gastronomical and the multilingual to the extreme, producing a utopian linguistic hybrid of the Latvian language to which a mix of foreign languages and countless intertextual references are added. This is achieved by the gastronomical vocabulary and imagery omnipresent in the narrative of writing a fictional cookbook. The depiction of gastronomical phenomena allows Zariņš to indirectly comment on Latvian history from the 1930s to 1945 and the confused and fragmented identities of these times.
{"title":"Dinner with Mock Faustus: Multilingual Cuisine Cooks the Identity","authors":"Mārtiņš Laizāns","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.9","url":null,"abstract":"Phenomena related to gastronomy form an important part of both individual and collective identities. The gastronomical dimensions of literature can often be perceived as a commentary on the political, historical and societal, going beyond just the food. As cuisines are becoming more mixed globally, languages describing gastronomical scenes in literature are also becoming more multilingual. The novel Mock Faustus (1973), by the Latvian writer Marģers Zariņš, fuses the gastronomical and the multilingual to the extreme, producing a utopian linguistic hybrid of the Latvian language to which a mix of foreign languages and countless intertextual references are added. This is achieved by the gastronomical vocabulary and imagery omnipresent in the narrative of writing a fictional cookbook. The depiction of gastronomical phenomena allows Zariņš to indirectly comment on Latvian history from the 1930s to 1945 and the confused and fragmented identities of these times.","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66672907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Literature and the Political: Multilingualism and Exophony in Contemporary Baltic and German- Language Culture
文学与政治:当代波罗的海和德语文化中的多语言和外来语
{"title":"Literature and the Political: Multilingualism and Exophony in Contemporary Baltic and German- Language Culture","authors":"M. Pajević","doi":"10.12697/il.2021.26.1.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.12697/il.2021.26.1.2","url":null,"abstract":"Literature and the Political: Multilingualism and Exophony in Contemporary Baltic and German- Language Culture","PeriodicalId":41069,"journal":{"name":"Interlitteraria","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66672637","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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