Multilingual America: Language and the Making of American Literature (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 156)

Throughout its history, America has been the scene of multiple encounters between communities speaking different languages. Literature has long sought to represent these encounters in various ways, from James Fenimore Cooper's frontier fictions to the Jewish-American writers who popularised Yiddish as a highly influential modern vernacular. While other studies have concentrated on isolated parts of this history, Lawrence Rosenwald's book is the first to consider the whole story of linguistic representation in American literature, and to consider as well how multilingual fictions can be translated and incorporated into a national literary history. He uses case studies to analyse the most important kinds of linguistic encounters, such as those between Europeans and Native Americans, those between slaveholders and African slaves, and those between immigrants and American citizens. This ambitious, engaging book is an important contribution to the study of American literature, history and culture. 9780521896863 Cover 1 Half-title 3 Series-title 4 Title 5 Copyright 6 Dedication 7 Contents 9 Preface 11 I 11 II 14 III 19 IV 21 Acknowledgments 23 Introduction: techniques, methods, theses 25 Terms and categories 25 The limits of what’s possible 28 Dialect and language 29 Epic, lyric, dramatic 35 Literature and the linguistic facts 37 A brief conclusion 43 Chapter 1 Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and the languages of America 44 Epilogue: polyglots as jekyll, polyglots as hyde 69 Chapter 2 Alfred Mercier, George W. Cable, and Louisiana French Creole 72 Two notes 74 The hedgehog 77 The fox 89 Conclusion 104 Chapter 3 More than an echo, or, English in Yiddish in America 106 Three prefatory notes 106 Words, words, words 108 Stereotypes and language traitors 116 Means of resistance 121 Motl the sociolinguist in america 126 Elye, pinye, and etymology 129 Brokhe and neologisms 133 Motl 136 Ventriloquism 138 Two concluding reflections 141 Chapter 4 “New language fun,” or, on translating multilingual American texts 146 Reflections 147 Case studies 150 Alfred Mercier, L’Habitation Saint-Ybars 150 English in Yiddish into English 152 Jeannette Lander, A Summer in the Week of Itke K. 155 Ana Lydia Vega, “Pollito: Chicken” 159 Rolando Hinojosa, Dear Rafe/Mi querido Rafa 163 Conclusion 169 Chapter 5 Towards a history of multilingual American literature 170 Why? 170 Precedents 173 New Cambridge 175 Biography, literary history, and multilingualism 180 Conclusion 182 Bibliography 184 Index 195 #,Publisher:,Cambridge,University,Press,#,Number,Of,Pages:,216,#,Publication,Date:,2008-10-27 "Throughout its history, America has been the scene of multiple encounters between communities speaking different languages. Literature has long sought to represent these encounters in various ways, from James Fenimore Cooper's frontier fictions to the Jewish-American writers who popularized Yiddish as a highly influential modern vernacular. While other studies have concentrated on isolated parts of this history, Lawrence Rosenwald's book is the first to consider the whole story of linguistic representation in American literature, and to consider how multilingual fictions can be translated and incorporated into a national literary history."-- Jaquette "Throughout its history, America has been the scene of multiple encounters between communities speaking different languages. Literature has long sought to represent these encounters in various ways, from James Fenimore Cooper's frontier fictions to the Jewish-American writers who popularized Yiddish as a highly influential modern vernacular. While other studies have concentrated on isolated parts of this history, Lawrence Rosenwald's book is the first to consider the whole story of linguistic representation in American literature, and to consider how multilingual fictions can be translated and incorporated into a national literary history."--Jacket

Explores the ways in which writers of American literature have represented encounters between communities speaking different languages.