Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self Literature and Culture Studies [Hardcover]

This edited collection explores the conjunction of multiculturalism and the self in literature and culture studies, and brings together essays by prominent researchers interested in literature and culture whose critical perspectives inform discussions of specific examples of multicultural contexts in which individuals and communities strive to maintain their identities.

The book is divided into two major parts, the first of which comprises literary representations of multiculturalism and discussions of its impasses and impacts in fictional circumstances. In turn, the second part primarily focuses on culture at large and real-life consequences. Taken together, the two complementary parts offer an illuminating and well-rounded overview of representations of multiculturalism in literature and contemporary culture from a variety of critical perspectives.

Fear of Multilingualism and the Uses of Nostalgia in Ivan Vladislavis The Restless Supermarket.- The Self Between Two Incongruous and Incompatible Cultures in Paul Bowless The Sheltering Sky.- Kazuo Ishiguros Buried Giant as a Contemporary Revision of Medieval Tropes.- Multiculturalism, the Foreign and Early Gothic Novels.- The House Sofi Built: Critique of Multiculturalism and Christian Patriarchy in Ana Castillos So Far From God. 

Leszek Drong is an Associate Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland. He is the Head of the Department of Rhetoric in Culture and the Media and Director of the Centre for the Study of Minor Cultures. His major publications include: Disciplining the New Pragmatism: Theory, Rhetoric and the Ends of Literary Study (Peter Lang Verlag 2006) and Masks and Icons: Subjectivity in Post-Nietzschean Autobiography (Peter Lang Verlag 2001) as well as numerous essalã6