Representations of displacement in literary texts

Abstract

The notion of contemporaneity has been discussed by many researchers and while some regard it with suspicion others think of it with enthusiasm. A fact that has become more and more frequent in the present days has also been very frequent in the last twenty-five year literary texts too: human displacement, which has shown both different motivations and implications. Exiled, refugee, expatriate, emigrated, stateless are some of the words used to indicate those differences. In the literary text, the consequences of displacement for the construction of identity are discussed in a spectrum of varied representations which confirms the relevance of the study of displacement as one of the features present in contemporaneous literature. In the literary works of Andreï Makine, the move, usually towards France, is configurated as a mythic quest for place, as the quest for the Grail which escapes the definitive apprehension, like in the legend.