{"id":10507,"date":"2025-10-02T07:30:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T07:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/?p=10507&lang=en"},"modified":"2025-10-11T09:12:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T09:12:37","slug":"guest-lecture-reading-multilingual-fiction-yann-martels-self-as-a-multilingual-mosaic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/?p=10498","title":{"rendered":"Guest lecture – Reading Multilingual Fiction: Yann Martel\u2019s Self as a Multilingual Mosaic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Rainier Grutman
\n<\/strong>(University of Ottawa, Canada)<\/p>\n

15 October 2025 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET<\/strong>
\nInstitute of World Literature SAS + online<\/p>\n

Join Zoom Meeting:<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/us06web.zoom.us\/j\/88989926723?pwd=1jSUGLTGHHe9aHxedFYCuQIBhy673Q.1<\/a>
\nMeeting ID: 889 8992 6723
\nPasscode: 251712<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This talk completes and complicates traditional mimetic (\u2018realist\u2019) readings or multilingual fiction by highlighting the aesthetic effects of heterolingualism and the structuring role of languages in terms of plot. Using Yann Martel\u2019s Self<\/em> (1996) as case study, it shows how overt use of French, Spanish, Czech, and Hungarian forces readers of this English-Canadian novel to confront its multilingual poetics. Czech and Hungarian are perhaps especially relevant in Bratislava: the former partner language of Slovak appears only briefly, but Hungarian occupies entire pages of dialogue. These linguistic fragments are left untranslated, furthermore, thus pushing readers beyond their linguistic comfort zones. Ultimately, they connect to the narrator\u2019s two central love interests (a girl from Prague and a member of Slovakia\u2019s historic Magyar minority), with Hungarian discreetly preparing the explosive and tragic finale of a novel that is as much about words as it is about the world.<\/p>\n

A Full Professor at the University of Ottawa (Canada), Rainier Grutman<\/strong> studied Romance philology, Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at Namur, Leuven and Madrid universities before earning his Ph.D. in French Studies in Montreal.\u00a0He has held appointments as visiting faculty in Belgium (Ghent, Leuven), Italy (Bologna) and the United Kingdom (Aston University). In 2022, he was elected to the Academia Europaea<\/a>. Rainier \"\"<\/a>Grutman started studying bilingual writers and multilingual texts long before they became fashionable research topics, most notably in his book, Des langues qui r\u00e9sonnent<\/em> (Montreal, 1997; 2nd<\/sup> ed. Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2019.) His latest contributions to this conversation appeared in the inaugural issue of Brill\u2019s Journal of Literary Multilingualism<\/em><\/a> (May 2023), the Forum for Modern Language Studies<\/em> (Oxford UP, Jan. 2024), and the edited volume, Plurilinguisme et production litt\u00e9raire transnationale en fran\u00e7ais depuis le Moyen Age<\/em> (Geneva: Droz, 2023).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lecture is held within the framework of the IMPULZ grant Translation and cross-lingual stylistic transfer: Towards a theory of language contact in literature.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rainier Grutman (University of Ottawa, Canada) 15 October 2025 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET Institute of World Literature SAS + online Join Zoom Meeting: https:\/\/us06web.zoom.us\/j\/88989926723?pwd=1jSUGLTGHHe9aHxedFYCuQIBhy673Q.1 Meeting ID: 889 8992 6723 Passcode: 251712 This talk completes and complicates traditional mimetic (\u2018realist\u2019) readings or multilingual fiction by highlighting the aesthetic effects of heterolingualism and the structuring role of … Pokra\u010dova\u0165 na Guest lecture – Reading Multilingual Fiction: Yann Martel\u2019s Self as a Multilingual Mosaic<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pozvanky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10507"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10581,"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10507\/revisions\/10581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usvl.sav.sk\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}