Post-monolingual Anglophone Novels

Abstract

A range of recent anglophone novels is committed to weaving connections between English and other languages, thus turning English into a language of encounter. Activating both multilingual and translingual configurations, these novels are what one might—in line with Yasemin Yildiz (2012)—call “post-monolingual.” Post-monolingual novels are powerful expressions of the plurality of languages that coexist within seemingly homogeneous spaces. Fluidizing the boundaries between languages, these novels pose intricate challenges for literary studies, which concern all major dimensions of the literary text, that is, its poetics, its modes of reading, and the logic of publishing. The article explores the complexities at the heart of post-monolingual novels, offering close readings of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s The Dragonfly Sea (2019) and Karina Lickorish Quinn’s The Dust Never Settles (2021).