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Plurilinguisme et migrations dans Nord Perdu de Nancy Huston
| Summary: | This article examines the essay Losing north: musings on land, tongue and self by Nancy Huston. This text, published in 1998 in the Parisian daily newspaper Le Monde, then in a volume the following year, is frequently quoted by critics. It is read here through the lenses of migration poetry, focusing the analysis on three of its key elements: generic hybridity, textual hybridity and intertextuality. The major theme, the exploration of language/languages, endows the text with a contradictory polyphony which it embodies perfectly. On the one hand, Losing north: musings on land, tongue and self gives voice to the different types of relationships one may form faced with experiences which language, even if we claim it as our own, inevitably fails to capture satisfactorily. On the other hand, the essay persistently blends the different attitudes engendered by “inappropriable linguistics” (Laurent Jenny). The result is a type of writing which is above all else paradoxical, thoroughly modern and which, denying all forms of categorization, challenges thought. |
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| Subject: | poetry of migrance textual and generic hybridity hybridité textuelle et générique poétique de la migrance écriture paradoxale paradoxical writing polyphonie intertextualité intertextuality polyphony |
| Country: | Portugal |
| Document type: | journal article |
| Access type: | Open |
| Associated institution: | Carnets, Revista Electrónica de Estudos Franceses |
| Language: | French |
| Origin: | Carnets, Revista Electrónica de Estudos Franceses |
| Summary: | This article examines the essay Losing north: musings on land, tongue and self by Nancy Huston. This text, published in 1998 in the Parisian daily newspaper Le Monde, then in a volume the following year, is frequently quoted by critics. It is read here through the lenses of migration poetry, focusing the analysis on three of its key elements: generic hybridity, textual hybridity and intertextuality. The major theme, the exploration of language/languages, endows the text with a contradictory polyphony which it embodies perfectly. On the one hand, Losing north: musings on land, tongue and self gives voice to the different types of relationships one may form faced with experiences which language, even if we claim it as our own, inevitably fails to capture satisfactorily. On the other hand, the essay persistently blends the different attitudes engendered by “inappropriable linguistics” (Laurent Jenny). The result is a type of writing which is above all else paradoxical, thoroughly modern and which, denying all forms of categorization, challenges thought. |
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