The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings

This article explores the formation and critical potential of contemporary French-Norwegian artist and poet Caroline Bergvall’s medieval trilogy, Meddle English (2011), Drift (2015), and Alisoun Sings (2019). In these three books, Bergvall develops a heterolingual aesthetic by creating a language th...

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Main Author: Elise ANGIOI
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) 2025-06-01
Series:E-REA
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/erea/19899
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author Elise ANGIOI
author_facet Elise ANGIOI
author_sort Elise ANGIOI
collection DOAJ
description This article explores the formation and critical potential of contemporary French-Norwegian artist and poet Caroline Bergvall’s medieval trilogy, Meddle English (2011), Drift (2015), and Alisoun Sings (2019). In these three books, Bergvall develops a heterolingual aesthetic by creating a language that is materially composed of diachronic and dialectical variations of English, both from medieval times, and imagined futures. The result is a language that rests in a temporal in-between that reveals the foreignness of English and undermines its monolingual and exclusionary dynamics. By attending to the temporal strategies through which Bergvall elaborates her poetics, I argue that the trilogy builds alternative imaginaries of language in a progressive utopian momentum that aims to rethink both possible futures and our contemporaneity.
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spelling doaj-art-50ebba4dd7ff4beab4b7454c79e4f7042025-08-20T03:30:15ZengLaboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)E-REA1638-17182025-06-0122210.4000/144qwThe temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun SingsElise ANGIOIThis article explores the formation and critical potential of contemporary French-Norwegian artist and poet Caroline Bergvall’s medieval trilogy, Meddle English (2011), Drift (2015), and Alisoun Sings (2019). In these three books, Bergvall develops a heterolingual aesthetic by creating a language that is materially composed of diachronic and dialectical variations of English, both from medieval times, and imagined futures. The result is a language that rests in a temporal in-between that reveals the foreignness of English and undermines its monolingual and exclusionary dynamics. By attending to the temporal strategies through which Bergvall elaborates her poetics, I argue that the trilogy builds alternative imaginaries of language in a progressive utopian momentum that aims to rethink both possible futures and our contemporaneity.https://journals.openedition.org/erea/19899temporalitycontemporary poetryheterolingualismmedieval circulations
spellingShingle Elise ANGIOI
The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings
E-REA
temporality
contemporary poetry
heterolingualism
medieval circulations
title The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings
title_full The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings
title_fullStr The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings
title_full_unstemmed The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings
title_short The temporal in-betweenness of Caroline Bergvall’s heterolingual poetics in Meddle English, Drift, and Alisoun Sings
title_sort temporal in betweenness of caroline bergvall s heterolingual poetics in meddle english drift and alisoun sings
topic temporality
contemporary poetry
heterolingualism
medieval circulations
url https://journals.openedition.org/erea/19899
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