The disparagement of multilingualism is a European development of the 18^th and 19^th centuries in which one national language and national literature were advocated, established and institutionalised. Multilingual writers made use of the creative potential of several languages even then. However, they often adapted to an increasingly monolingual book market, which made their individual multilingualism invisible.
This is evident in literary historiography which established a monolingual national canon.
Researching hidden multilingualism is often difficult:...