Introduction

Abstract

The political and linguistic diversity of the European continent -which challenges the uniqueness of a global language -induces a multifocal and multilingual approach in literary creation concerning the European issue.Moreover, the current conjuncture of the Old Continent is confronted with dangerous populist drifts and the temptation of a nationalist closure. The fictional concern of writers focusses on this complex problematic to be addressed by, on the one hand, the still significant sequels of the conflictual History inherited from the 19th and 20th centuries and, on the other hand, the prospective idea of an institutional construction. This idea is essentially focused on the economy and finance, which Europe cannot be reduced to.The tension between these two perspectives -which raises many questions and debates, as the attempt to write a European "constitution" has revealed -appears nevertheless to be the focus of a discussion about Europe, below and beyond the European Union. In fact, it often takes the form of a subtle narrativization and fictionalisation of our continent as a topic, a theme, a concern, and even an obsession in many European authors' work.Besides that, due to globalisation, the rapid displacement of representations and the projection into (re)invented peripheral spaces give rise to literary liminalities that catalyse writings and fictional readings from Europe's peripheries, and in languages belittled in the context of global communication. These literary liminalities, which look to Europe retrospectively and/or critically, coincide with various geographic peripheries (Nordic, Baltic, Slavic, Hellenic, etc.). Others refer to minor linguistic statutes in the context of the great European nation-states.Authors who publish in these minor languages might be brought together with writers who publish in a wide circulation language, but do not fall into the literary mainstream. Both groups are subject to the logic of an editorial market that is often circumscribed to very specific thematic and market niches.