Engaging with recent research in literary multilingualism studies, the global anglophone and comparative studies, this book theorizes so-called post-monolingual anglophone novels. Inspired by Yasemin Yildiz’s Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (2012), post-monolingual anglophone novels are understood as literary texts that activate multi- and translingual strategies to mount a challenge to the ‘monolingual norm’ and the homogenizing aspirations of English. Post-monolingual novels employ literary configurations of multi- and translingualism without ignoring the ongoing validity of the monolingual norm in the international book market and major civil institutions. This corpus of texts is therefore highly self-conscious about the use of language. As post-monolingual novels stage exchange and movement between languages, they also model, in the realm of fiction, new concepts of language. In several case studies of contemporary anglophone post-monolingual novels from different parts of the world, the book demonstrates how the post-monolingual in literature operates within different cultural, and political contexts. The readings of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Yvonne A. Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings, J.M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus and Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous propose theoretically and methodologically innovative ways of engaging with literary multi- and translingualism. While the analyses focus on the post-monolingual poetics, they also give attention to the novels’ modes of production and circulation in the anglosphere.
Neumann
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1. Introduction: Theorizing Post-monolingual Anglophone Novels; 2. “[B]inding together worlds that have been ripped apart” – The Post-Monolingual Poetics in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness; 3. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – Histories of Linguistic Entanglement in Eastern Africa; 4. “English – not my property’: Ex-appropriations of Language in J.M. Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus; 5. Lost Mother Tongues and Queer Languaging in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous; 6. Travelling Languages: Creoles in Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings; 7. Conclusion: Reading Post-Monolingual Anglophone Novels
Birgit Neumann is a Professor and Chair of English Literature & Anglophone Studies at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf.
