Subversion of Borders through a Multilingual Aesthetics in German and Italian Literary Texts from South Tyrol

Since South Tyrol became a part of Italy after WWI, the German language and culture ended up in the minority status within the national context. This led to several conflicts regarding identities and cultures and resulted politically in the establishing and strengthening of the autonomy for the province (1966, 1972 and 1992). Nevertheless, identity struggles persisted on various levels, be it in education, job sectors, or regarding questions around bilingualism/trilingualism (including the Ladin language). This contribution discusses how these identity conflicts were narrated in the German and Italian prose and poetry from 1965 on, and how the literature employed multilingual strategies to subvert the ‘borders’ of the real-life context.