Epilogue Arab Literature, World Literature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tahia Abdel Nasser
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Arab Literature ◽  
Literary Systems ◽  
National Literatures

This chapter looks at the effects of autobiographical production in other languages and translation on the globality of national literatures and world literary study. It examines current theorisations of world literature and considers Arab autobiography within new literary systems.

Debating World Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Birus
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Literary Systems ◽  
National Literatures

Abstract Since the turn of the millennium the idea of “World Literature” has experienced a boom. This development is closely connected with the increasingly rapid globalization process, which began during the first few decades of the nineteenth century and led to the co-emergence of Weltliteratur and Littérature comparée in 1827. Goethe’s proclamation of the “Epoch of World Literature” created the impression that existing national literatures were to be supplanted; instead, however, the same period simultaneously witnessed the latter’s triumphant proliferation. Beecroft’s typology of the evolution of literary systems may assist in overcoming the rather pointless antithesis between world literature and national literatures. Since literary translation now plays an increasingly important role, it has become an indispensable factor contributing to the flourishing of world literature.

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.

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.

scholarly journals The Literary World of the North African Taghrība

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-214
Author(s):  
Karima Laachir
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
World Literature ◽  
World System ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
North African ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
The North ◽  
Shared Set ◽  
Literary Systems

Abstract The novels by North African novelists Waciny Laredj, Majid Toubia and Abdelrahim Lahbibi that refashioned the traditional Arabic genre of the taghrība inspired by the medieval epic of Taghrība of Banū Hilāl, still a living oral tradition in the region, offer an interesting case study of location in world literature. They circulate both within national (Algerian, Egyptian and Moroccan) literary systems and the pan-Arab literary field while maintaining a distinct aesthetic and political locality. In these novels, the literary life of the North African taghrība takes forms and meanings that are geographically and historically located, and that are shaped by the positionality of the authors. This paper intervenes in the discussion on location in world literature from the perspective of Arabic novelistic traditions by showing that the pan-Arabic literary field itself is far from homogenous but is marked by a diversity of narrative styles and techniques that can be both local/localised and transregional at the same time. Therefore, we need to shift our understanding of world literature beyond macro-models of “world-system” that assume a universally-shared set of literary values and tastes.

Jewish American Literature Against the World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Schreier
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
American Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Jewish American Literature ◽  
The World

Abstract By way of a brief genealogy of the Jewish American literary field and through the lens of recent attempts to imagine how comparative literature-based thinking about a concept of “world literature” can be critically productive for Jewish literary study, this article analyzes Jewish American literary studies’ prestige problem. Because it has persistently failed to theorize the intellectual and methodological assumptions underlying its practice, Jewish American literary study remains burdened by the essentialist implications of an ethnological historicism. This article ultimately argues that Jewish American literary study needs to take more seriously the possibilities offered by a materialist epistemology rather than the Jewish studies-based historicist ontology it has mostly taken for granted. “My hope is that a Jewish American epistemology can operate outside the penumbra of a tired and played-out concept of ethnicity—a term that unavoidably, if spectrally, posits a biologistic object at the heart of its historicist project—even as it might still claim the mantle of Jewish-y-ness.”

scholarly journals Title Museality as a Trend in the World Literature of the Last Fifty Years

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
L. S. Mitina
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Trend ◽  
National Literatures

The aim of this study is to define the concept of the title museality, the selection and analysis of relevant works of the world literature both separately and as a unified group of narratives, and determining the existence of a separate literary trend. Research methodology. The author uses analysis, synthesis, abstraction, concretization and generalization of scientific sources and literary texts with features of title museality. Results. The main characteristic evidence of the concept of “title museality” is determined and a group of literary narratives is identified. These features correspond to: “The Heritage” by Siegfried Lenz (Germany), “Outside the Dog Museum” by Jonathan Carroll (USA), “The Night at the Museum” by Milan Trenc (Croatia), “Behind the Scenes at the Museum” by Kate Atkinson (Great Britain), “The Museum of Innocence” by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey), “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” by Oksana Zabuzhko (Ukraine) and “Museum of Thieves” by Lian Tanner (Australia). We considered and analyzed the museological features of each of these texts of the novel form, belonging to the seven national literatures of the world. The general and distinctive features of the considered works are revealed and their museological properties are established as a unified group of narratives. It is argued that the title museality is a trend in world literature of the last fifty years and this trend is steadily growing. Novelty. An attempt is made to formulate a new museal­literary concept, to highlight and analyze the relevant literary works as a unified group of narratives and identify a certain trend in world literature. The practical significance. The key results of this study can be used for further research of other literary works with signs of the title museum that is reviewed, and also other national literatures of the world. They also can be used in studying of museological aspects of the literary studies or literary aspects of the museology.

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