scholarly journals William Saroyan: Ethnic and Family Identities in Universal Settings

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaiane Muradian ◽  
Gaiane Muradian
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
World Literature ◽  
New World ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Migration Literature ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
Family Identities ◽  
Significant Point ◽  
Armenian American

As a particular cultural production, migration literature, increasingly heralded as a new world literature, internationalised literature or world fiction – is a form of transnational writing, concerned mostly with cosmopolitan issues. The universalism of migration literature, however, is based on national or ethnic tradition. Moreover, it is manifested through original life experiences and attitudes that are typical of ethnic expressions of identities. The significant point that this paper emphasises is the fact that William Saroyan is an author who represents a dynamic Armenian-American cultural blend, moving both universal and ethnic literary expressions to new heights. His works demonstrate clearly both his universality and his adherence to national heritage – his ethnic and family identities are employed in his distinct western settings and tones.

scholarly journals Where Is My Place? Authors from the Former Yugoslavia in Contemporary German Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivana Pajić ◽  
Mirjana Zarifović Grković
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World Literature ◽  
New World ◽  
German Literature ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Migration Literature ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Contemporary German Literature ◽  
And Migration

Until the first half of the twentieth century there were only a few representative authors with a migrant background who wrote in German. Since the 1950s and 60s this number has significantly increased. The terminological determinant of this literature has been debated for decades, as the crucial questions to be answered first are, in fact, what kind of literature it is and what place it should take in the German literary scene. This is evidenced by many names that are used or were used in the discourse on this literature, the most common of which are “gastarbeiter”, “migrant” and “migration” literature. The winner of the most prestigious German literary prize “Deutscher Buchpreis” for 2019 is Sasa Stanisic, an author originally from the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, who writes in German and is one of the best contemporary German-speaking writers. For this reason, this paper deals with the position of an under-researched group of authors originally from the former Yugoslavia in contemporary German literature from the period when that literature was still called “gastarbeiter”, until today, when it is considered equal to contemporary German literature and when there is no more need for special marginalizing terminological definitions, such as those mentioned above, nor literary awards intended for this literature alone, such as the “Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis” prize. The paper clarifies the terminological determinants of gastarbeiter, migrant, migration, hybrid and new world literature, by which some authors characterize this literature, and points out the reasons why the use of these terms is (un)justified. In addition, attention is drawn to representative authors who write in German, originating from the former Yugoslavia, in chronological order, as well as the awards for which some of them were nominated or have won, which testifies to the importance of these writers in the German speaking area and the equality with other German writers which they have achieved in recent years.

World Literature, the opaque archive, and the untranslatable: J. M. Coetzee and some others

2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942098874
Author(s):  
Andrew van der Vlies
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Limit Case ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
Disciplinary Field

A key concern of recent theoretical orientations in the development of “World Literature” as a discipline has been the question of accessibility to literatures in minor languages, which is to say of literal and metaphorical translatability, even transparency. This essay explores the challenge posed by the occlusion of the possible intertextual influence of works in such languages that are evident only as a trace in texts that now seem indisputably part of a canon of World Literature. What happens when the engagement of writers in this canon with cultural production in languages adjacent to those in which they themselves principally operate is not evident to an increasingly global community of scholars, and perhaps not even evidenced in an author’s archive (whether this is understood to be a material collection or indeed a virtual space conceptualized as the literary ecosystem in which an author has developed)? This essay addresses these questions with reference to the work of South African-born Nobel Prize-winning writer J. M. Coetzee, and to the problem posed by some of his work’s (and his archive’s) others, here specifically Afrikaners and the work of Afrikaans-language writers. This consideration has implications not only for the current shape of Coetzee studies, but for that of World Literature more broadly, presenting something of a limit-case for the translation metaphor that directs some of its formulations as disciplinary field.

Entgrenzte Figuren – bewegte Erinnerungen. Migration im Spannungsfeld von Literatur und Begriff

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 109-139
Author(s):  
Hamid Tafazoli
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Aesthetic Perception ◽  
Migration Literature ◽  
External Space ◽  
The One

Abstract My paper discusses the controversial relationship between literature and literary studies by using the example of the term ›migration literature‹. It demonstrates in the first part that ›migration literature‹ as a term in literary studies does not expose explications of rational reconstructions of a conceptual content in Harald Fricke’s and Klaus Weimar’s understanding. In its history (Adelson 1991; 2004), ›migration literature‹ goes back to a chain of different terms and definitions as Gastarbeiter- or Ausländerliteratur and reflects strategies of homogenization and exclusion. From the 1980s forward, those terms produce in cultural contexts a semantic field that propagates culture based on a definition of ex negativo (Tafazoli 2019). The first part of my paper describes an outline of influences of homogenization and reductionism on the discourses of migration in literary studies and explains in the second part an asymmetrical relationship between motive on the one hand and terminology on the other. The term ›migration literature‹ seems to dominate this relationship by determination of a source of ›accepted truths‹ related to the life and background – specifically to the place of birth and the origin – of the author (Bay 2017). By prioritization of criteria beyond narrative reality, literary studies led in the 1980s and 1990s discourses on migration on the sidelines of canon of German speaking literature (Weigel 1991; Wilpert 2001). With regard to terminological determination in order to produce interpretative sovereignty (Foucault 1994), my paper exemplifies in the second part that the term ›migration literature‹ collects selected and limited fields of social, historical and political knowledge in perspective adjustment and in order to classify literature beyond aesthetic criteria. By this means, inductive standards (Müller 2010a; 2010b) classify the literary object ›migration‹ ontologically and regardless of factuality of the author’s life on the one hand and fictionality of narrative text on the other. The ontological classification has been used, for example, in contexts that replace the figure of stranger (Fremder) by the figure of migrant and determines the latter as figuration of external space of culture. The replacement suggests a perspective rigidity in the cultural production of knowledge that flows into a terminological classification and claims with the term ›migration literature‹ sovereignty over culture. From this point of view, the author and his work should be located in the external space of canonized literature. The second part of my paper comes to the conclusion that the term ›migration literature‹ has been developed in politicized frames of external-textual ›accepted truths‹ and bases its stability on cultural essentialism and exclusion regardless of heterogenetic appearance (Bhatti 2015). With regard to theories of »literature on the move« (Ette 2001), my paper understands that migration has always formed a considerable part of literary production. Therefore, migration could be understood as a literary motive. This meaning would undermine an ontological understanding of culture. Narrative texts develop poetics of migration and create by figurations of migration a poly-perspectivity in which migration advances to a polysemantic motive. My paper discusses these thoughts in the context of cultural memory in the third part and understands varied and multifaceted constructions of cultural memory on all sides of cultural borders. This part confronts the asymmetrical relationship between motive and terminology with discussions on migration as narrative of cultural memory that belongs to cultural majority and minority equally, at the same time and in the same space. Based on this understanding, my paper argues that migration as a motive construct shapes and leads discourses of culture under the conditions of global re-formation. The shift of the perspective from conceptual classification to close-readings of literary constructions should lead us to considerations about the openness of the narrative in distinction to terminological unity and should also initiate a paradigm shift in locating migration in discourses of literary studies. The theoretical considerations will be exemplified in the fourth section by Mohammad Hossein Allafis Frankfurter Trilogie that is a collection of the novels Die Nächte am Main (1998), Die letzte Nacht mit Gabriela (2000) and Gabriela findet einen Stapel Papier (2012). The fourth part of my paper examines in Frankfurter Trilogie a reading that integrates migration as a motive into the discourse of cultural memory of global challenges. Using the example of the Trilogie, this part of my paper demonstrates that discussions on migration in the context of cultural memory could initiate a shift in the perspective of reception from conceptual homogenization to narrative openness. The shift of perspective shows that literature translates the questions of community into the aesthetic perception of the form of culture and civilization in which the community actually articulates and appears itself and shows also that reading of migration as a statement about one nation has lost its explanatory power. The last part of my paper resumes my thoughts and takes position in the current fields of research in literary studies.

scholarly journals Caribbean Spaces and Anglophone World Literatures

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-158
Author(s):  
Jan Rupp
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
New World ◽  
Western World ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Old World ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
The World ◽  
Small Set ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Anglophone World

AbstractCaribbean writing in English highlights the call for a pluralization of world literature(s) in a double sense. It is produced in multiple Caribbean spaces, both domestic and diasporic, and it clearly stands for the extension of what used to be a rather small set of (Western) world literature. Moreover, not least as a legacy of the colonial New World/Old World distinction, visions of the world are at the heart of the Caribbean spatial imaginary as probed in many literary works. This article explores the trajectory of Caribbean spaces and Anglophone world literatures as a matter of migration and circulation, but also in terms of the symbolic translation by which experiences of movement and space are aesthetically mediated. Because of its global span across different locations Caribbean writing in English is constituted as world literature almost by definition. However, some works pursue a more circumscribed concern with domestic spaces and local artistic idioms, which affects their translatability and redefines a conventional ‘from national to world literature’ narrative.

New World Literature

1950 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 271
Author(s):  
Manuel Olguin ◽  
Arturo Torres-Rioseco
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
New World
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