The critical, emotional and intellectual change which every immigrant is obliged to endure and confront is experienced with singular intensity by immigrant writers who have also adopted another language for their literary expression. Concentrating on European authors of the second half of the twentieth century who have chosen French as a language for their literary expression, and in particular the novels by Romain Gary, Agota Kristof, Milan Kundera and Jorge Semprun, with reference to many others, European Literary Immigration into the French Language explores some of the common elements in these works of fiction, which despite the varied personal circumstances and literary aesthetics of the authors, follow a similar path in the building of a literary identity and legitimacy in the new language. The choice of the French language is inextricably linked with the subsequent literary choices of these writers. This study charts a new territory within Francophone and European literary studies in treating the European immigrants as a separate group, and in applying linguistic, sociological and psychoanalytical ideas in the analysis of the works of fiction, and thus represents a relevant contribution to the understanding of European cultural identity. This volume is relevant to French and European literature scholars, and anyone with interest in immigration, European identity or second language adoption.

This book focuses on literature and cinema in English or French by authors and directors not working in their native language. Artists with hybrid identities have become a defining phenomenon of contemporary reality following the increased mobility between civilisations during the postcolonial period and the waves of emigration to the West. Cinema and prose fiction remain the most popular sources of cultural consumption, not least owing to the adaptability of both to the new electronic media. This volume considers cultural products in English and French in which the explicitly multi-focal representation of authors' experiences of their native languages/cultures makes itself conspicuous. The essays explore work by the peripheral and those without a country, while problematising what might be meant by the widely used but not always well-defined term ‘bicultural’. The first section looks at films by such well-known filmmakers working in France as Bouchareb, Kechiche, Legzouli and Dridi, as well as the animated feature Persepolis. Here the focus is on the representation of human experience in spatial terms, exploring the appropriation of territory cohabited by ‘local’ people, newcomers and their children, haunted by the cultural memories of distant places. The second part is devoted to multicultural authors whose ‘native’ language was English, Russian, Polish, Hungarian or Spanish (Beckett, Herzen, Voyeikova, Triolet, Conrad, Hoffmann, Kristof, Dorfman), and their creative engagement with difference. A study of the emergence of multilingual writing in Montaigne and an autobiographical essay by Elleke Boehmer on growing up surrounded by English, Dutch, Afrikaans and Zulu frame the volume's chapters. The collection relishes the freedom provided by liberation from the confines of one language and culture and the delight in creative multilingualism. This book will be of significant interest to those studying the subject of biculturalism, as well as the fields of comparative literature and cinema.

The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France explains the causes of twenty-first-century global migrations and their impact on French literature and the French literary establishment. A marginal genre in 1980s France, since the turn of the century “migrant literature” has become central to criticism and publishing. Oana Sabo addresses previously unanswered questions about the proliferation of contemporary migrant texts and their shifting themes and forms, mechanisms of literary legitimation, and notions of critical and commercial achievement. Through close readings of novels (by Mathias Énard, Milan Kundera, Dany Laferrière, Henri Lopès, Andreï Makine, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Alice Zeniter, and others) and sociological analyses of their consecrating authorities (including the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée, the Académie française, publishing houses, and online reviewers), Sabo argues that these texts are best understood as cultural commodities that mediate between literary and economic forms of value, academic and mass readerships, and national and global literary markets. By examining the latest literary texts and cultural agents not yet subjected to sufficient critical study, Sabo contributes to contemporary literature, cultural history, migration studies, and literary sociology.

This study presents a unique collection of essays which focus on the relationships among form, aesthetics, and transnational women’s writing produced in recent years. The essays in this volume treat literary works from diverse cultures and geographies, concentrating on the intersections of theory and literature. This results in a wide spectrum of identities and texts – including the work of Swedish poet Aase Berg, the Indian translation market, the Chicana novel, creative non-fiction by Croatian writer Dubravka Ugrešic, and multilingual hybrid texts by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha – in order to provide a framework for an overarching theory of transnationalism as it interacts with newer paradigms of gendered identity and the new forms of literature to which they contribute. Transnationalism and Resistance offers a multifaceted approach to transnational studies and constitutes a cogent analysis of the ways in which women’s writing informs contemporary global literary Production. This volume is of interest for scholars in women’s studies, literature, the social sciences, cultural studies and all other fields that take an interest in writing that addresses contemporary global issues.

This book examines the ways in which fiction has addressed the continent since the Second World War. Drawing on novelists from Europe and elsewhere, the volume analyzes the literary response to seven dominant concerns (ideas of Europe, conflict, borders, empire, unification, migration, and marginalization), offering a ground-breaking study of how modern and contemporary writers have participated in the European debate. The sixteen essays view the chosen writers, not as representatives of national literatures, but as participants in transcontinental discussion that has occurred across borders, cultures, and languages. In doing so, the contributors raise questions about the forms of power operating across and radiating from Europe, challenging both the institutionalized divisions of the Cold War and the triumphalist narrative of continental unity currently being written in Brussels.

The end of communism in Europe has tended to be discussed mainly in the context of political science and history. This book, in contrast, assesses the cultural consequences for Europe of the disappearance of the Soviet bloc. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, the book examines the new narratives about national, individual and European identities that have emerged in literature, theatre and other cultural media, investigates the impact of the re-unification of the continent on the mental landscape of Western Europe as well as Eastern Europe and Russia, and explores the new borders in the form of divisive nationalism that have reappeared since the disappearance of the Iron Curtain.

This two-volume collection of articles on European migration during the 19th and 20th centuries examines the motivations for migration, drawing on the particular experience of Irish, German, Scottish, Italian, Scandinavian and other European migrants, as well as those who migrated to Europe, such as West Indian migrants into Britain. The first volume examines the hostility faced by migrants, both in their home countries and their countries of destination. The second volume considers the contributions migrants have made to their host countries, and compares the experiences of different migrant groups. In addition, the continuing links between migrants and their countries of origin is explored through a series of essays and papers. Altogether there are 51 articles, dating from 1950 to 1994.

The archeology of a novel: an afterword to The Blue Mountains of China / Rudy Wiebe -- "A new Athens rising near the Pole"?: the Canadian experience in Frances Brooke's The history of Emily Montague (1769) / Gordon B(c)œlling -- Anna Brownell Jameson's Winter studies and summer rambles in Canada (1838): a European woman's view of the New World / Heinz Antor -- "Capable of great improvement": Catherine Parr Traill's images of Canada in The young emigrants (1826) / Klaus Stierstorfer -- Deserts and visions of paradise: the representation of the Canadian landscape in advertisements and guides for Canadian immigrants / Markus Wust -- Destination and destiny: contemporary Canadian plays on immigrants / Albert-Reiner Glaap -- The representation of Canada in novels by Frederick Marryat and Robert Michael Ballantyne / Melanie Just -- Victorians abroad: Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope in Canada / Michael Heinze -- "Alle diese L(c)Þnder sind unbekannt": Canada in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century German travel literature / Ingmar Probst -- "A Canadian literature?": Elizabeth Smart and the failures of nationalism / Robert McGill -- In search of Cathaia-- voyages into the unexpected / Elke Nowak -- Re-enacting the Arctic voyage: the Northwest Passage in British literature / Annette Kern-St(c)Þhler -- Stuffed mooseheads: Canada as (missing) clich(c)♭ in European theatre / Christopher Innes -- Cultural reductionism and the reception of Canadian literature in Germany / James Skidmore -- Wildlife abounds? The photographic deconstruction of a Canadian clich(c)♭ in Robert Gernhardt's satire "Blanket Creek oder Verwilderte W(c)ơnsche" / Susanne Peters -- "One sees only what one knows": German popular literature and its images of Canada / Laurenz Volkmann -- Canada as a role model? Reflections of a country in post-war German youth fiction / Miriam Richter -- What makes a Canadian? Strategies of presenting Canadianness in teaching materials / Matthias Merkl.