Abstract

Intercultural and intracultural dialogue have become increasingly important in the 20th century society and the two forms of multicultural communication are repeatedly reflected not only in children's literature but also in mainstream fiction. Even though today it seems that more research related to the depiction of multicultural situation focuses on the visual media, the impact of literary texts on audiences is still so strong that the analysis of classical works of multicultural literature remains essential. Hence, the goal of this paper is to establish how literature aiming at mature adult readers can contribute to sensitization to multicultural communication. The issue will be tackled by focusing on Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird which is considered as one of the classics of multicultural fiction in English and was translated into several languages. This paper first analyses the multicultural issues presented in this literary work and then establishes to what a degree the presentation of the issues related to the 1930s in the United States of America can still foster multicultural awareness. The results of this study reveal that the elaboration of all fictional entities promotes intercultural awareness of mature readers and advocates intercultural and intracultural understanding