A Critique of ‘Literary Worlds’ in World Literature Theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 354-372
Author(s):  
Ryan Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Literary Systems ◽  
Literature Theory ◽  
East West

Abstract Recently, critics of world literature such as Alexander Beecroft, Eric Hayot, and Haun Saussy have argued that a multitude of possible literary worlds make up the world of world literature. Literary worlds theory provides a richer and more relativistic account of how literary production and analysis work than do similar models such as Franco Moretti’s and Pascale Casanova’s world literary systems. However, the theory runs into two difficulties: it downplays the socio-historical situation of the critic and the text; and it has difficulty accounting for the cross-world identity of characters and how logically inconsistent worlds access one another. To refine the theory, I modify G.E.R. Lloyd’s concept of the “multidimensionality” of reality and literature. Strengthening Lloyd’s concept through reference to recent work in comparative East-West philosophy, I contend that the addition of Lloyd’s theory resolves the problems presented above while still allowing for a relativistic critical approach to world literature.

Jewish American Writing and World Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saul Noam Zaritt
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Isaac Bashevis Singer ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Literature Theory

Jewish American Writing and World Literature studies Jewish American writers’ relationships with the idea of world literature—how they place themselves within its boundaries, outside its purview, or, most often, in constant motion across and beyond its maps and networks. Writers such as Sholem Asch, Jacob Glatstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anna Margolin, Saul Bellow, and Grace Paley all responded to a demand to write beyond local Jewish and American audiences and toward the world, as a global market and as a transnational ideal. At the same time, their work is deeply informed by an intimate connection to Yiddish, a Jewish vernacular with its own global network and institutional ambitions. This book tracks the attempts and failures, through translation, to find a home for Jewish vernacularity in the institution of world literature. Beyond fame and global circulation, world literature holds up the promise of legibility, in which a threatened origin becomes the site for redemptive literary creativity. But this promise inevitably remains unfulfilled, as writers struggle to balance potential universal achievements with untranslatable realities, rendering impossible any complete arrival in the US and in the world. The exploration of the translational uncertainty of Jewish American writing joins postcolonial critiques of US and world literature and challenges Eurocentric and Anglo-American paradigms of literary study. In bringing into conversation the fields of Yiddish studies, American Studies, and world literature theory, the book proposes a new approach to the study of modern Jewish literatures and their implication within global empires of culture.

What, Us Global?

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Identity Group ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The World ◽  
Selection Of

This article addresses what can roughly be considered the “Hispanic sphere” in the field of World Literature Studies. First, the concepts of the local and the regional are examined from the perspective of world literature. The present article also lays out the limitations of a number of theoretical approaches that define world literature negatively: as a concept that necessarily excludes or denies any elements regarded as “local” or “regional.” In this respect, it offers an account of the discomfort or alienation experienced by those who see themselves as belonging to a particular identity group and are urged to justify their position in global terms. To illustrate this, this article explores a selection of specific approaches attending to how they define and place the academic and literary production of the Hispanic sphere within broader fields of study, such as those related to the world novel and the phenomenon of glocality. Finally, it discusses the emergence of global regionalism, from both outside and within what can be referred to as “regional entities.”

Eurafrasiachronologies

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-28
Author(s):  
Alexander Beecroft
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Old World ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
Literature Theory

Critical accounts of World Literature theory often speak of the dangers of “Eurochronology,” of the tendency to impose the narrative (and teleology) of the history of European cultures upon other regions of the world. This temporal dimension of Eurocentrism is of course to be avoided assiduously. At the same time, a synthetic reading of the literary histories of many of the larger cultures of premodern Eurasia suggests that there may in fact be room for a “Eurasiachronology,” or indeed a “Eurafrasiachronology,” which would identify parallels and connections across the entire so-called “Old World,” and offer a chronological basis for thinking about world literary history in a comparative way.

scholarly journals Reception aesthetics in Vietnam

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Author(s):  
Hieu Van Do
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The West ◽  
Local Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Theory ◽  
Literature Theory ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
Important Basis ◽  
Reception Aesthetics

Reception aesthetics is a theory of literature which has exerted major impacts throughout the world from the late 1960s to the late 1980s in the West, espacially dymanically in China from the 1980s of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century. In Vietnam, although this theory was born quite early (1985), its mark is still not deeply engraved; thus a lot of potentials not having been discovered and utilized. Recreating the complete appearance of reception aesthetics in Vietnam and explaining the cause of that appearance is an important basis for discussion about the reception of foreign theory. How to make Vietnam literature theory integrated and successfully communicated with the world literature theory? How to make the most effective use of the Western theory in solving problems of the local literature? How to build a firm theory background imbued with national identities in the context of globalization? etc. are the author’s issues of great concerns.

scholarly journals World Literature and the Problem of Postcolonialism

2021 ◽  
pp. 57-74
Author(s):  
Lorna Burns
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
A Priori ◽  
World System ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Jacques Ranciere ◽  
The World ◽  
Literature Theory ◽  
Research Collective

This essay identifies in the materialist strand of world literature theory, especially Pascale Casanova and the Warwick Research Collective, a reliance upon a priori structures (the world-system) and prioritisation of the literary registration of inequality. By contrast, I contend, world-literary critics who wish to maintain the dissident spirit of postcolonialism ought to demonstrate a shared equality. By reference to the philosophies of Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière, this essay sets out the case for an alternative to world-systems critique: one that maintains literature’s potential for creating new forms of resistance, dissent, and, crucially, equality.

scholarly journals Does art therapy need a theory? Considerations on terminology, models and paradigms of art therapy

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-50
Author(s):  
Wita Szulc
Keyword(s):  
Art Therapy ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
The Way

The author discusses Polish publications on the theoretical foundations of art therapy published in Poland in chronological order and confronts them with the world literature of Art Therapy. One of theproblems discussed in this paper is plagiarism in the Polish literature on Art Therapy, which is an obstacle on the way to Art Therapy achieving the status of science. The article covers such issues as sources of knowledge about Art Therapies, terminology, types, models and paradigms of Arts therapy. The aim of this article is to draw attention to the need for a critical approach to the available and disseminated sources of knowledge about the theory.

Indonesian Literature’s Position in World Literature

TEKNOSASTIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dina Amelia
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Western World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

There are two most inevitable issues on national literature, in this case Indonesian literature. First is the translation and the second is the standard of world literature. Can one speak for the other as a representative? Why is this representation matter? Does translation embody the voice of the represented? Without translation Indonesian literature cannot gain its recognition in world literature, yet, translation conveys the voice of other. In the case of production, publication, or distribution of Indonesian Literature to the world, translation works can be very beneficial. The position of Indonesian literature is as a part of world literature. The concept that the Western world should be the one who represent the subaltern can be overcome as long as the subaltern performs as the active speaker. If the subaltern remains silent then it means it allows the “representation” by the Western.

Comparing Comparisons: Political Implications of Different Notions of Difference

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Glenn Odom
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
David Damrosch ◽  
Location Point

With the rise of the American world literature movement, questions surrounding the politics of comparative practice have become an object of critical attention. Taking China, Japan and the West as examples, the substantially different ideas of what comparison ought to do – as exhibited in comparative literary and cultural studies in each location – point to three distinct notions of the possible interactions between a given nation and the rest of the world. These contrasting ideas can be used to reread political debates over concrete juridical matters, thereby highlighting possible resolutions. This work follows the calls of Ming Xie and David Damrosch for a contextualization of different comparative practices around the globe.

Boatmen, Wastrels, and Demons: Figures of Literature

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Sawhney
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The World ◽  
National Literatures

Engaging some of the questions opened by Ranjan Ghosh's and J. Hillis Miller's book Thinking Literature Across Continents (2016), this essay begins by returning to Aijaz Ahmad's earlier invocation of World Literature as a project that, like the proletariat itself, must stand in an antithetical relation to the capitalism that produced it. It asks: is there an essential link between a certain idea of literature and a figure of the world? If we try to broach this link through Derrida's enigmatic and repeated reflections on the secret – a secret ‘shared’ by both literature and democracy – how would we grasp Derrida's insistence on the ‘Latinity’ of literature? The groundlessness of reading that we confront most vividly in our encounter with fictional texts is both intensified, and in a way, clarified, by new readings and questions posed by the emergence of new reading publics. The essay contends that rather than being taught as representatives of national literatures, literary texts in ‘World Literature’ courses should be read as sites where serious historical and political debates are staged – debates which, while being local, are the bearers of universal significance. Such readings can only take place if World Literature strengthens its connections with the disciplines Miller calls, in the book, Social Studies. Paying particular attention to the Hindi writer Premchand's last story ‘Kafan’, and a brief section from the Sanskrit text the Natyashastra, it argues that struggles over representation, over the staging of minoritised figures, are integral to fiction and precede the thinking of modern democracy.

Pelvic schwannoma

GYNECOLOGY ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 84-86
Author(s):  
Sergei P. Sinchikhin ◽  
Sarkis G. Magakyan ◽  
Oganes G. Magakyan
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Nerve ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Morphological Study ◽  
Clinical Observation ◽  
Nerve Trunk ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Surgical Volume ◽  
The World ◽  
Brain And Spinal Cord ◽  
The Brain

Relevance.A neoplasm originated from the myelonic sheath of the nerve trunk is called neurinoma or neurilemmoma, neurinoma, schwannoglioma, schwannoma. This tumor can cause compression and dysfunction of adjacent tissues and organs. The most common are the auditory nerve neurinomas (1 case per 100 000 population per year), the brain and spinal cord neurinomas are rare. In the world literature, there is no information on the occurrences of this tumor in the pelvic region. Description.Presented below is a clinical observation of a 30-year-old patient who was scheduled for myomectomy. During laparoscopy, an unusual tumor of the small pelvis was found and radically removed. A morphological study allowed to identify the remote neoplasm as a neuroma. Conclusion.The presented practical case shows that any tumor can hide under a clinical mask of another disease. The qualification of the doctor performing laparoscopic myomectomy should be sufficient to carry out, if necessary, another surgical volume.

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