Title: Frontières liquides : l’eau dans les romans de la terre au Luxembourg
Author, co-author: Thiltges, Sébastian
Abstract: While the earth usually represents the element in which cultural attachment is rooted, water on the contrary reveals what exceeds or interpenetrates the land. The liquid element is as ambiguous as it is proteiform: vital and destructive at the same time, it sometimes is a figure of liberation, sometimes of tragic dissolution. In a corpus of Luxembourgish novels from the early 20th century, this paper will analyse the depictions of water, mostly in its opposition with the soil, in order to question the meaning of the liquid element in a context where, corollary to social, economic and political changes, the earth is generally dominant in discourse and imagination. If nature has mostly been confined to the local and cultural landscape, an eco-material reading highlights on the contrary a global and crossborder dimension inherent to nature, but also to culture, disregarding the map-drawn boundaries that define the individual and the collective. Finally, a sensitive, anthropoetical reading also challenges historical, contextual and fictional frames. The materiality of the liquid element is not just a metaphor: it shapes natural, as well as textual environments.
Author, co-author: Thiltges, Sébastian
Abstract: While the earth usually represents the element in which cultural attachment is rooted, water on the contrary reveals what exceeds or interpenetrates the land. The liquid element is as ambiguous as it is proteiform: vital and destructive at the same time, it sometimes is a figure of liberation, sometimes of tragic dissolution. In a corpus of Luxembourgish novels from the early 20th century, this paper will analyse the depictions of water, mostly in its opposition with the soil, in order to question the meaning of the liquid element in a context where, corollary to social, economic and political changes, the earth is generally dominant in discourse and imagination. If nature has mostly been confined to the local and cultural landscape, an eco-material reading highlights on the contrary a global and crossborder dimension inherent to nature, but also to culture, disregarding the map-drawn boundaries that define the individual and the collective. Finally, a sensitive, anthropoetical reading also challenges historical, contextual and fictional frames. The materiality of the liquid element is not just a metaphor: it shapes natural, as well as textual environments.