Languages of Exile

This book examines the relation between geographic and linguistic border crossings in twentieth-century world literature. Exploring the dynamic from a comparative and translingual perspective, this volume reveals differing literary strategies for responding to exile and argues for the crucial role of exile in understanding writing of the period.

Axel Englund is Lecturer in Aesthetics at Södertörn University, Sweden. His research centres on twentieth-century poetry and the interplay of music and literature. In 2011, he was an Anna Lindh Fellow at Stanford University and has held visiting scholarships at Columbia University and Free University Berlin. Anders Olsson is Professor of Literature at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research focuses on the European poetic tradition from Romanticism to the present. He is also a literary critic, essayist and poet and in 2008 he was elected as a member of the Swedish Academy.

Contents: Axel Englund/Anders Olsson: Introduction: Twentieth-Century Ruptures of Location and Locution – Ulf Olsson: Evil Freedom: Linguistic Confusion and Convention in Joseph Conrad’s – Maria Kager: To ‘Fondle in Humbertish’: Vladimir Nabokov’s Linguistic Exile – Ljubica Mio?evi?: ‘What’s Difference?’: On Language and Identity in the Writings of Aleksandar Hemon – Tobias Dahlkvist: Exile as a School of Scepticism: Emil Cioran – Arthur Rose: Insomnia and Exile: Cioran’s Separate Man – Gabriela Seccardini: Exile in the French Language: Assia Djebar and Malika Mokeddem – Katharina Birngruber: Language Shift and the Experience of Exile: Agota Kristof ’s Prose in the Context of Migration – Adam Wickberg Månsson: Exile Writing and the Medium of the Book: Julio Cortázar’s – Jesper Olsson: Speech Rumblings: Exile, Transnationalism and the Multilingual Space of Sound Poetry – W.C. Bamberger: Language and Alternate History in Mauricio Kagel’s – Anders Olsson: Aching Through: Nelly Sachs’s Poetics of Exile – Markus Huss: The Linguistic Outlaw: Peter Weiss’s Return to German as Literary Language – Axel Englund: Bleston Babel: Migration, Multilingualism and Intertextuality in W.G. Sebald’s Mancunian Cantical – Katarina Båth: The Meaning of a Piece of Silk: On Irony and Animals in W.G. Sebald’s .