This strand explores multilingualism’s revolutionary potential and creative force in language, literature, thought and the visual arts. Using the modern period (from the long nineteenth century to the twenty-first century) as the temporal framework, it examines the flowering of multilingualism inherent in a single linguistic system and one regional cultural complex, and the impact of this on linguistic, literary and cultural creativity. Creative multilingualism, conceived as the novel ways of thinking engendered in imaginative works emerging from engagement with more than one language, will inform new ways of thinking and writing about the creative impetus, underpinning any form of multilingualism and about its role in literary innovation in world literatures.
The investigators collaborated with the English PEN and engaged with authors who drew on more than one language, and explored with Haggerston School year 10 students the creative effects of multilingualism in literary composition.
Blog posts on World Literatures
Poetics of Exile: the “Ruins” of Homeland
Poetry in Translation, Poetics of Translation
Conference review: Performing Multilingualism in World Literatures
Multilingual poetry workshops with the London Centre for Languages & Cultures
Multilingualisms in World Literature Conference
Celebrating linguistic diversity through multilingual poetry
Creativity and World Literatures: Languages in Dialogue Workshop
The Arabian Nights and the Craft of Storytelling
Arabic Poetry and Stories in Translation Workshops
Recent Publications
Hiddleston, J, Ouyang, W, (eds) Multilingual Literature as World Literature. Bloomsbury Academic: Literatures as World Literature. 2021.
Ouyang, W. "Multilingualism and Creativity in World Literature" in Creative Multilingualism: A Manifesto. Kohl, K, Dudrah, R, Gosler, A, Graham, S, Maiden, M, Ouyang, W and Reynolds, R, (eds). Open Book Publishers. May 2020.
Hiddleston, J (co-editor). Activism and Aesthetics in World Literatures (Special Issue of Humanities). Forthcoming.
Hiddleston, J (co-editor). Creativity in World Literatures: Languages in Dialogue. Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature. Forthcoming.
See also:
Selected publications: Jane Hiddleston
