The translingual imagination in the work of four women poets of German-Jewish origin

Abstract

In this thesis, I am developing a theory of the translingual imagination which can be used as a tool to explore literature written in a second language. The term ‘translingual imagination’ was first coined by Steven Kellman in his essay ‘Translingualism and the Literary Imagination’, describing the work of authors writing in a language other than their first. Recent years have seen a growing body of research on these writers, not least because of a risen interest in post-colonial writing and transnational and migration studies. Literary scholars have increasingly questioned ‘the paradigma of monolingualism’, and linguistic research has looked at interrelations between migration,language and identity. However, research projects have often focused on prose writing, predominantly examining the work of canonized male authors (such as Kafka, Conrad or Rushdie), and post-war migrants(such as Turkish-born authors writing in German, or South American-born writers writing in English). Poetry written by women poets of German-Jewish origin has mainly been considered part of Holocaust writing, and over the past decades German scholars have been trying to reclaim these texts as ‘German -Jewish’ poetry. My thesis considers the work of four English poets of German-Jewish origin in the context of translingual writing. While using Kellman’s term, I shall suggest a set of specific criteria to allow for a clearer definition of the ‘translingual imagination’. In applying these criteria to the work of women poets of German-Jewish origin, I will not only show the translingual imagination at work but also encourage a new reading of literature written by German-Jewish refugees that goes beyond the notion of exile poetry.

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