Negating Multilingualism: Anti-mimetic Speech Representation in Terézia Mora’s Seltsame Materie and Alle Tage

Abstract

Unlike much contemporary literature that ties multilingualism to migration or interculturality, Terézia Mora employs it as a formal and thematic device to express existential alienation. Drawing on key concepts from multilingual literary studies – especially Robert Stockhammer’s taxonomy – the article analyzes multilingualism in Seltsame Materie (1999) and Alle Tage (2004), introducing the new concept of “negating multilingualism”. This term captures both the apparent absence of overt multilingualism in parts of Mora’s work and its alienating role within the narrative structure, thus expanding the scholarship on literary multilingualism and its analytical categories.