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How Bilingual Novelists Utilize their Linguistic Knowledge: Towards a Typology of the Contemporary ‘Modern Languages Novel’ in English

Julian Preece Orcid Logo, Aled Rees

Modern Languages Open, Volume: 1, Start page: 1

Swansea University Authors: Julian Preece Orcid Logo, Aled Rees

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DOI (Published version): 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.378

Abstract

We present in survey form a typology of a new sub-genre we term the English 'Modern Languages Novel', identifying five overlapping categories in a large sample of fiction, most of it by authors whose work has been submitted to the Booker or Man-Booker Prize over fifty years between 1969 an...

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Published in: Modern Languages Open
ISSN: 2052-5397
Published: Liverpool Liverpool University Press 2021
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa56340
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Abstract: We present in survey form a typology of a new sub-genre we term the English 'Modern Languages Novel', identifying five overlapping categories in a large sample of fiction, most of it by authors whose work has been submitted to the Booker or Man-Booker Prize over fifty years between 1969 and 2018. The five types are: war fiction set abroad; novels featuring a cultural intermediary, such as a language teacher or spy, as narrative focaliser in a foreign setting; novels written after a period of exposure to linguistic and cultural alienation but which do not directly thematise the experience; novels with snippets of untranslated dialogue or other quotations from other languages; and finally novels set in a new language environment without an Anglophone focaliser. We comment on examples of each type and present an explanation for the invisibility of the sub-genre up to now.
Keywords: trans-lingual writing, hidden language knowledge, encounter with abroad
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: AHRC AH/N004647/1 Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community, Lead Research Organisation: University of Manchester, Department Name: Arts Languages and Cultures
Start Page: 1