The Invention of Monolingualism

The Invention of Monolingualism harnesses literary studies, applied-linguisitics, translation studies, and cultural studies to offer a ground-breaking investigation of monolingualism. After briefly describing what "monolingual” means in scholarship and public discourse, and the pejorative effects this common use may have on non-elite, non-cosmopolitan populations, Gramling sets out, across four chapters, to discover a new conception of monolingualism. Along the way, he explores how writers—Arabic, Latin American, German, and English-language—have in recent decades confronted monolingualism in their texts, and how they have critiqued the World Literature industry’s increasing hunger for “translatable” novels. Moving from surprising and startlingly original case studies to brilliant reappraisals of widely-taught concepts in literary studies, The Invention of Monolingualism is a book to be reckoned with for students and scholars of literary theory, world literature, and the political and cultural implications of translation.