Imagining the Mother Tongue in Contemporary Literature on The Theme of Migration. Case Studies: Liliana Corobca, Dan Lungu, and Marin Mălaicu-Hondrari

Leveraging the interdependence between literature and language and revealing the metaphorical transfer of meanings among them, this paper will attempt to demonstrate that migration literature constructs an area of images and symbols through language, which reflects the characters’ attempts at integration into a different geography and the consequences of alienation both for them and for those remaining at home, especially for the children. For foreigners, the Romanian represents the Levant, the alterity, and their vision encapsulates a problematic forma mentis for the global space, as it betrays the hegemonic relationship between centres and peripheries. In this report, the mother tongue appears as a spatial metaphor, based on the junction of national and transnational, because it unites different mental grammars, offering an interpretation of migration through language that corresponds to the identity mutations suffered by the characters.

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