Publication by Leeds Trinity lecturer examines multilingualism in modernist fiction

​English Lecturer Dr Juliette Taylor-Batty’s new book, Multilingualism in Modernist Fiction, has just been released by Palgrave Macmillan.

It has long been recognised that modernist writing, and especially poetry, makes use of different languages, but until now there has been very little work on this aspect of modernist fiction.

Dr Taylor-Batty’s book examines a range of important modernist writers including D.H. Lawrence, Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, looking not only at how they represent interlingual encounters, but also how they use translation, interlingual processes (such as writing in a foreign language), and how they deliberately mix languages for stylistic effect.

She argues that multilingualism, rather than being exceptional or unusual, is fundamental to modernist fiction, and demonstrates how these writers’ use of different languages relates to changes in the period in ideas regarding national identity, national language, cosmopolitanism, and translation.

Dr Taylor-Batty is one of Leeds Trinity University’s Associate Principal Lecturers in English. She commented:

“I’m really excited to see this book finally in print. It responds to exciting developments in modernist studies in recent years, but also comes out of a long-standing personal interest in literary multilingualism, and in the relationship between translation and literature, that dates back to my PhD days at the University of Warwick.”