The Constitutive Multilingualism of Literature
Hybrid seminar
Organisers: MMKI-MMA (Budapest), LangueFlow, Bielefeld University, EU COST Action Project MultiLiLiTrans
Date: Thursday 9 April 2026 at
- 16:30–18:00 CET (Budapest, Berlin, Roma)
- 10:30 EDT (New York)
- 22:30 SGT (Singapore)
Literary forms and practices come into being from continuous cross-linguistic contact, rather than emerging from self-contained monolingual traditions. Genres migrate between cultures and traditions, enriching them, and texts travel through the world in translation.
Readers routinely encounter literature in languages other than those in which it was originally written. From global adaptations of haiku poetry to transnational histories of novels, literary production and reception are shaped by processes of transfer, mediation and reinterpretation across linguistic boundaries.
Consequently, multilingualism is not a secondary or external condition imposed upon literature, but a foundational element of its formation, circulation and meaning-making. To understand literature, researchers are required to pay close attention to the multilingual dynamics constituting its core.
Prof. Dorijan Hajdu will introduce the topic in the lecture Literature as Multilingual by Nature: Translation as a Constitutive Force. The presentation is followed by a discussion.
Please sign up for the Zoom link before 31 March 2026 at zerocodeswitching // at // pm.me.
Photo: © Sabira Ståhlberg 2026
This event is part of the EU COST project Literary multilingualism and social transformations in superdiverse societies (MultiLiLiTrans), WorkGroup 4
