Multilingualism and Locality. Hungarian and Romanian Contact Narratives about 1989 Cover Image

Többnyelvűség és lokalitás. Magyar és román érintkező narratívák 1989-ről
Multilingualism and Locality. Hungarian and Romanian Contact Narratives about 1989

Author(s): Mónika Dánél
Subject(s): Comparative Study of Literature, Hungarian Literature, Romanian Literature
Published by: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület
Keywords: world literature; Hungarian Transborder Literature as multilingual; 1989; Bildungsroman;collage;

Summary/Abstract: The study discusses contemporary theories of world literature, transnationalism and transculturation in the context of East-Central Europe as a historical, cultural, geopolitical in-between territory, and reconceptualises the phenomenon of the Hungarian Transborder Literature from the perspectives of multilingual affiliations. Hungarian and Romanian novels as “contact narratives” create 1989 as a historical nodal point and – through the poetics of accents – shape the local as multilingual. The embodied memory of the dictatorial system in the novels recalls the tradition of the Bildungsroman in a specific way – like a self-alienated de-formation process of socialist propagandistic formation techniques which were efficiently inscribed into the body. In the novels, the reflection and even deconstruction of the societal conditioning could be seen as a common generational search for a new realistic language. In the discussion of the theoretical and literary texts, the study applies the collage as a reading strategy, which – according to Susan Stanford Friedman – “stages a juxtaposition that foregrounds the tension – the dialogic – pull between commensurability and incommensurability”.

  • Issue Year: LXXXII/2020
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 1-27
  • Page Count: 27
  • Language: Hungarian