"A Patchwork of Languages: Italian British Migrant Writing 1938-2020"

Divided into two main paragraphs, this paper explores the highly plurilingual trait of Italian British literary prose. After a brief overview of the history of Italian in English-speaking countries, it will show what has remained of their numerous authors’ native languages – particularly in England, Wales and Scotland – as well as of those that they learned during and after the Second World War. Respectively entitled “Italian and Dialectal Forms: Crystallising the Past” and “Transnational Identities in Contemporary Times: German and French”, the two main paragraphs will connect the uses of standard/dialect forms to rural culture, food and social religious rites, while discussing to what extent Italian British authors and their characters considered the war as an opportunity to learn new languages. Engaging the reader in a rich intertextual and plurilungual path, this paper will finish with the Italian Scot writer Anne Pia, who wanted to share experience with French since 1971. Her production includes her intimate reflections on her need to “recapture her lost identity” in Paris as the ideal place where to “welcome in otherness.”