Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English: A Comparative Study

✍ Scribed by Sandra Vlasta

• Publisher: Brill
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 307
• Series: (187 Internationale Forschungen Zur Allgemeinen Und Vergleichende)
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Up until now, 'migration literature' has primarily been defined as 'texts written by migrant authors', a definition that has been discussed, criticised, and even rejected by critics and authors alike. Very rarely has 'migration literature' been understood as 'literature on the topic of migration', which is an approach this book adopts by presenting a comparative analysis of contemporary texts on experiences of migration. By focusing on specific themes and motifs in selected texts, this study suggests that migration literature is a sub-genre that exists in both various bodies of literature as well as various languages. This book analyses English and German texts by authors such as Monica Ali, Dimitré Dinev, Anna Kim, Timothy Mo, Preethi Nair, Caryl Phillips, Hamid Sadr, and Vladimir Vertlib, among others.

✦ Table of Contents

Contemporary Migration Literature in German and English: A Comparative Study
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
1: Introduction
1.1 Research on Literature and Migration in the German- and English-speaking World
1.2 Studying Literary Themes and Motifs
1.3 The Present Volume: Questions of Terminology, the Gains of a Comparative Approach, and Themes and Motifs to be Analysed
1.4 Excursus: The Context – Immigration to Great Britain and Austria
2: The Motif of Language in Migration Literature
2.1 Neither Here nor There – The Second Generation as Linguistic and Cultural Translators
2.2 A Language of Images in Anna Kim’s Die Bilderspur
2.3 The Motif of the Tongue in Dimitré Dinev’s Novel Engelszungen
3: Identity and the Search for Identity in MigrationLiterature Expressed by Cooking, Eating, and Food
3.1 ‘Chutneyfication’ in Preethi Nair’s One Hundred Shades of White
3.2 Sweet and Sour Identities: Levels of Discourse on Identity in Connection with Cooking and Food in Timothy Mo’s Sour Sweet
3.3 Food, Cooking, Eating, and the Expression of Jewish Identity in Vladimir Vertlib’s Novel Letzter Wunsch
4: Depictions of the New Homeland
4.1 Depictions of England in Caryl Phillips’ Novel The Final Passage
4.2 Depictions of the New Homeland in Monica Ali’s Novel Brick Lane
4.3 Outside Looking In – The Depiction of Austrian History in Hamid Sadr’s Novel Der Gedächtnissekretär
5: Global Ethnoscapes in Migration Literature
5.1 Locations
5.2 Protagonists
5.3 The Shifting of Periphery and Centre and the Topos of the Border
6: Résumé
Appendix: Bio-Bibliographical Notes on the Authors
Bibliography
1 Primary Sources
2 Secondary Sources