Towards a Literary History of “Broken Language": Reading Accent in E.T.A. Hoffmann, K.A. Tavaststjerna, and Vilhelm Moberg

Ever since the shibboleth-narrative in the Book of Judges, the consequences of linguistic passing or non-passing have been demonstrated in literature. In this article, we argue that so-called “broken” or “accented” instances of language can provide us with thought-provoking opportunities to study literary multilingualism from new vantage points. We argue that accented language (in terms of a language that reverberates with another language, being simultaneously absent and present) forms a prism that exposes difference on multiple levels: linguistic, cultural, aesthetic, societal, political, and historical. Our examples consist of canonical 19th and 20th century works from Finland, Germany, and Sweden.