WReC (Warwick Research Collective)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381892
- eISBN:
- 9781781382264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381892.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter attempts to resituate the problem of ‘world literature’, considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined ...
More
This chapter attempts to resituate the problem of ‘world literature’, considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development. Following the lead of Franco Moretti, Fredric Jameson and others, it proposes that world-literature be thought about as the literature of the world-system. The ‘combined unevenness’ that is a formal feature of modern literary production is read as a registration of capitalism on a world scale. A critique is mounted of theories of modern literature (including ‘modernism’) that displace capitalism from centre stage. Particular attention is paid here to the work of Edward W. Said, Emily Apter, Susan Bassnett, Rey Chow, and Wai Chee Dimock.Less
This chapter attempts to resituate the problem of ‘world literature’, considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development. Following the lead of Franco Moretti, Fredric Jameson and others, it proposes that world-literature be thought about as the literature of the world-system. The ‘combined unevenness’ that is a formal feature of modern literary production is read as a registration of capitalism on a world scale. A critique is mounted of theories of modern literature (including ‘modernism’) that displace capitalism from centre stage. Particular attention is paid here to the work of Edward W. Said, Emily Apter, Susan Bassnett, Rey Chow, and Wai Chee Dimock.
Sharae Deckard, Nicholas Lawrence, Neil Lazarus, Graeme Macdonald, Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Benita Parry, and Stephen Shapiro
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381892
- eISBN:
- 9781781382264
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381892.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book attempts to resituate the problem of ‘world literature’, considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined ...
More
This book attempts to resituate the problem of ‘world literature’, considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development. The implications of this theory for cultural analysis have received relatively little attention, even though it might be said to draw attention to a central arc or trajectory of modern(ist) production in literature and the other arts worldwide. It is in the conjuncture of combined and uneven development, on the one hand, and the recently interrogated and expanded categories of ‘world literature’ and ‘modernism’, on the other, that this work looks for its specific contours. The first two chapters argue for a single, but radically uneven world-system; a singular modernity, combined and uneven; and a literature that variously registers this combined unevenness in both its form and content to reveal itself as, properly speaking, world-literature. The four substantive chapters that follow explore a selection of modern-era fictions in which the potential of world-literary comparativism is dramatically highlighted. The novel is treated paradigmatically, not exemplarily, as a literary form in which combined and uneven development is manifested with particular salience, due in no small part to its fundamental association with the rise of capitalism and its status in peripheral and semi-peripheral societies as a ‘modernising’ import. The peculiar plasticity and hybridity of the novel form enables it to incorporate not only multiple literary levels, genres and modes, but also other non-literary and archaic cultural forms.Less
This book attempts to resituate the problem of ‘world literature’, considered as a revived category of theoretical enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the theory of combined and uneven development. The implications of this theory for cultural analysis have received relatively little attention, even though it might be said to draw attention to a central arc or trajectory of modern(ist) production in literature and the other arts worldwide. It is in the conjuncture of combined and uneven development, on the one hand, and the recently interrogated and expanded categories of ‘world literature’ and ‘modernism’, on the other, that this work looks for its specific contours. The first two chapters argue for a single, but radically uneven world-system; a singular modernity, combined and uneven; and a literature that variously registers this combined unevenness in both its form and content to reveal itself as, properly speaking, world-literature. The four substantive chapters that follow explore a selection of modern-era fictions in which the potential of world-literary comparativism is dramatically highlighted. The novel is treated paradigmatically, not exemplarily, as a literary form in which combined and uneven development is manifested with particular salience, due in no small part to its fundamental association with the rise of capitalism and its status in peripheral and semi-peripheral societies as a ‘modernising’ import. The peculiar plasticity and hybridity of the novel form enables it to incorporate not only multiple literary levels, genres and modes, but also other non-literary and archaic cultural forms.
WReC (Warwick Research Collective)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381892
- eISBN:
- 9781781382264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381892.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter offers a reading of novels from the European literary periphery, proposing that the realities of combined and uneven development – often conceived as characterising the non-European ...
More
This chapter offers a reading of novels from the European literary periphery, proposing that the realities of combined and uneven development – often conceived as characterising the non-European world – are in fact constitutive of European modernism also, and remain so in the contemporary moment. The works examined range across peripheral Europe and span the ‘long 20th century’, from Dostoevsky's time to our own: authors considered include Dostoevsky, Pist’anek, Hamsun, Baroja, Laxness, Kelman, and Stasiuk. Again, as in the previous chapters, the formal features of combined unevenness are decoded as registering the complex, fissiparous social relations characteristic of relatively ‘backward’ formations caught up in the vortex of capitalist modernisation.Less
This chapter offers a reading of novels from the European literary periphery, proposing that the realities of combined and uneven development – often conceived as characterising the non-European world – are in fact constitutive of European modernism also, and remain so in the contemporary moment. The works examined range across peripheral Europe and span the ‘long 20th century’, from Dostoevsky's time to our own: authors considered include Dostoevsky, Pist’anek, Hamsun, Baroja, Laxness, Kelman, and Stasiuk. Again, as in the previous chapters, the formal features of combined unevenness are decoded as registering the complex, fissiparous social relations characteristic of relatively ‘backward’ formations caught up in the vortex of capitalist modernisation.
