Abstract
While multilingualism has been a relevant concept in the creation and analysis of Belarusian literature throughout history (with reasons that vary from the numerous official.and cultural bans imposed on the local language to the territory’s multicultural atmosphere, having recognized as many as four official languages at once in the early 20th century), the idea of exophony, or foreign-language literary creation, is still relatively new in philological studies in general —it first appeared in Germany in 2007—, and much more so in the context of Belarusian literature. The purpose of our research is to present a panoramic review of two different groups of writers who are currently influencing the establishment of a new Belarusian literary canon: on the one hand, those born in Belarus who use a combination of languages in their work or choose a language different from Belarusian (most prominently, Russian), such as Valžyna Mort (Belarusian-English), Viktar Marcinovič (Belarusian-Russian) or Dzmitry Strocaŭ (Russian); on the other, authors of foreign origins who choose Belarusian as their language of creation, like Alaksej Arciomaŭ, Źmicier Bartosik (Russia) or Van Šyvej (China). Our analysis is carried out on the basis of the writers’ original texts and, when possible, through interviews with them in order to reveal a clearer picture of the languages and identities that concur in the literature of today’s Belarus.
Presenters
Angela Espinosa ruizAssistant Professor, Department of Belarusian Studies, University of Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Multilingualism, Exophony, Belarusian literature, Postcolonialism
