Code-Switching and Polylingual Reality: An Aesthetics of Translation in Nancy Huston’s Trois fois septembre and Danse noire

Abstract

ABSTRACT If literary code-switching allows authors to play out the plurality of linguistic reality, and crucially the articulation of selfhood and difference in textual representations of polylingual reality, the work of Nancy Huston provides a fruitful space for discussion. Polylingual reality is portrayed in the author’s heterolingual novels in which different languages are represented on the levels of both the story and the text. Huston’s novel Danse noire is a somewhat experimental text in which readers are confronted with linguistic representational hybridity. In contrast to this experiment, Huston’s novel Trois fois septembre, which sees the character Solange translate letters in English to her French-speaking mother, only gives readers access to the French translation by the character, even though there are metacommentaries on the translation process by both characters. This article will work through those features that allow Huston to portray the dynamic use of language at the level of the story and its characters.