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Title
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Brussels is Europe: Koen Peeters’ "Grote Europese Roman" as Multilingual Literature
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Author
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Abstract
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| This article focuses on the novel "Grote Europe Roman" (2007; "Major European Novel") which is written by Flemish and Belgian writer Koen Peeters and deals with Europe, Belgium and Brussels. Belgium, being a multilingual and federal nation-state, could be seen as Europe en miniature with its capital Brussels bringing many of the central problems of Europe into focus. Before analyzing Koen Peeters’ "Grote Europese Roman", I will give a short introduction into the discourses on mono- and multilinguality in Belgium, Flanders and Brussels (1.). My analysis of "Grote Europese Roman" is split in two parts: the first part deals with the characters of the novel and their (multicultural) identities and experiences (2.1.); the second part focuses more on the multilingual elements within the novel (2.2.). In the conclusion, I will argue that the novel on the one hand counteracts the separatist imagination of a self-contained monolingual and homogenous Flemish culture, thus opening the door to a hybrid or diverse understanding of European culture. On the other hand, however, I will point out how the multilingual strategies of the novel still reproduce the hegemony of national languages and testify of a specific Flemish understanding of certain connotations of European standard languages. |
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Language
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English
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Source (book)
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Challenging the Myth of Monolingualism / Minnaard, Liesbeth [edit.]; et al.
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Source (series)
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Thamyris/Intersecting: Place, Sex and Race; 28
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Publication
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Leiden
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Brill
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2014
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ISBN
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978-90-420-3856-1
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DOI
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10.1163/9789401210980_012
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Volume/pages
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p. 133-147
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
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