Linguistic Diversity in East-Central European Minority Literature: The Post-Imperial Borderlands of Petar Milošević

Abstract

Abstract Most recent studies on multilingual writing deal with literature by first- or second-generation immigrants. This article responds to debates about multilingual literature by examining the asymmetrical, historically-rooted multilingualism of minority groups in East-Central Europe. It does so by exploring linguistic diversity and its effects in the novels of the bilingual Serbian-Hungarian author Petar Milošević, novels that put the Serbian minority in Hungary centre stage. It is argued that Milošević’s prose fiction not only invites the reader to rethink the nature of script, standard language and cultural identity as historically contingent and multiply entangled, but also effectively refashions the cultural memory of the Serbian minority in Hungary. The novels’ broader relevance lies in their foregrounding of the minority’s cultural and linguistic doubleness, both in relation to the nation-state in which they live and to the external homeland. As such, they also potentially illuminate the position of other linguistic minorities in former Habsburg borderlands.