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 ...
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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.
Laetitia Nanquette
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474486378
- eISBN:
- 9781399501736
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474486378.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book analyses the field of contemporary Iranian literature. It explores how literature has functioned and circulated since the 1979 revolution until the present, both within Iran and in ...
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This book analyses the field of contemporary Iranian literature. It explores how literature has functioned and circulated since the 1979 revolution until the present, both within Iran and in countries of the Iranian diaspora, focusing on North America, Western Europe and Australia. It focuses on prose productions, analysing several genres and media. The book takes Iran as its starting point, revealing the forms, structures and functions of Iranian literature within Iranian society, before turning to the global diaspora to examine the current dynamics of literary production and circulation between Iranian diasporic spaces and the homeland. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Iranian literary field in its relation to the social, economic and political fields, both within Iran and in the diaspora. It is also a critical intervention in the field of World Literature as it explores Persian literary texts and the Iranian literary field in their worldly dimensions, with an interdisciplinary and global perspective. It is based on 15 years of fieldwork and travels in Iran, with unique interviews, data collection and participant observation.Less
This book analyses the field of contemporary Iranian literature. It explores how literature has functioned and circulated since the 1979 revolution until the present, both within Iran and in countries of the Iranian diaspora, focusing on North America, Western Europe and Australia. It focuses on prose productions, analysing several genres and media. The book takes Iran as its starting point, revealing the forms, structures and functions of Iranian literature within Iranian society, before turning to the global diaspora to examine the current dynamics of literary production and circulation between Iranian diasporic spaces and the homeland. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary Iranian literary field in its relation to the social, economic and political fields, both within Iran and in the diaspora. It is also a critical intervention in the field of World Literature as it explores Persian literary texts and the Iranian literary field in their worldly dimensions, with an interdisciplinary and global perspective. It is based on 15 years of fieldwork and travels in Iran, with unique interviews, data collection and participant observation.
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.
David Huddart
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380253
- eISBN:
- 9781781381540
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380253.003.0007
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language
This chapter juxtaposes World Literatures and World Englishes in order to understand the continued relevance of literary studies to engaging with globalized languages and cultures. This juxtaposition ...
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This chapter juxtaposes World Literatures and World Englishes in order to understand the continued relevance of literary studies to engaging with globalized languages and cultures. This juxtaposition leads to an emphasis on the relative slowness of reading literature in the context of increasingly instantaneous information retrieval and dissemination. The chapter argues that different literatures, including World Englishes literatures, contribute to humanities education through their lack of transparency and the difficulty of framing them in the terms of a globalized communicative ideology. World Englishes, by contrast with Global English, are aspects of this opaqueness, encouraging and requiring a critical engagement vital to the humanities.Less
This chapter juxtaposes World Literatures and World Englishes in order to understand the continued relevance of literary studies to engaging with globalized languages and cultures. This juxtaposition leads to an emphasis on the relative slowness of reading literature in the context of increasingly instantaneous information retrieval and dissemination. The chapter argues that different literatures, including World Englishes literatures, contribute to humanities education through their lack of transparency and the difficulty of framing them in the terms of a globalized communicative ideology. World Englishes, by contrast with Global English, are aspects of this opaqueness, encouraging and requiring a critical engagement vital to the humanities.
Gerhard P. Gross (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813175416
- eISBN:
- 9780813175447
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813175416.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Military History
This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume ...
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This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume concentrates primarily on elements of the conflict between the Central Powers (specifically Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary) and pre-revolutionary Russia. The book approaches topics of interest through a tripartite structure, addressing the operational conduct of the war, the combatants’ cultural conceptions of themselves and the enemy, and how the conflict has been understood and commemorated in the years since the end of the war. The volume concludes with a chapter that brings together themes studied throughout the book in a discussion of the potential continuities between the German conduct and perception of war from the First World War to the Second.Less
This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume concentrates primarily on elements of the conflict between the Central Powers (specifically Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary) and pre-revolutionary Russia. The book approaches topics of interest through a tripartite structure, addressing the operational conduct of the war, the combatants’ cultural conceptions of themselves and the enemy, and how the conflict has been understood and commemorated in the years since the end of the war. The volume concludes with a chapter that brings together themes studied throughout the book in a discussion of the potential continuities between the German conduct and perception of war from the First World War to the Second.
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/9781781381892.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This theoretical chapter examines the question of what has been called ‘peripheral realism–. Reviewing the texts selected for examination in the book overall – produced at different times and places ...
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This theoretical chapter examines the question of what has been called ‘peripheral realism–. Reviewing the texts selected for examination in the book overall – produced at different times and places across the span of the long 20th century – it shows that they share not only common themes, plots and subjects, but also a range of formal features that might be called ‘irrealist’. The argument is that these techniques and devices represent formal registers of (semi-) peripherality in the world-literary system, discernible wherever literary works are composed that mediate the lived experience of capitalism's bewildering creative destruction (or destructive creation). This argument is mounted through particular reference to such authors as Dostoevsky and Machado de Assis and to literary historical development in such regions as Russia and the Caribbean, the United States, Brazil, Mexico (and Latin America more generally).Less
This theoretical chapter examines the question of what has been called ‘peripheral realism–. Reviewing the texts selected for examination in the book overall – produced at different times and places across the span of the long 20th century – it shows that they share not only common themes, plots and subjects, but also a range of formal features that might be called ‘irrealist’. The argument is that these techniques and devices represent formal registers of (semi-) peripherality in the world-literary system, discernible wherever literary works are composed that mediate the lived experience of capitalism's bewildering creative destruction (or destructive creation). This argument is mounted through particular reference to such authors as Dostoevsky and Machado de Assis and to literary historical development in such regions as Russia and the Caribbean, the United States, Brazil, Mexico (and Latin America more generally).
Karim Mattar
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474467032
- eISBN:
- 9781474484671
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474467032.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This book draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida, and world-systems theory to address the institutionalized construct of “world literature” from its origins in Goethe and Marx to the ...
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This book draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida, and world-systems theory to address the institutionalized construct of “world literature” from its origins in Goethe and Marx to the present day. It argues that through its history, this construct has served to incorporate if not annul local literatures and the concept of “local literature” itself, and to universalize the novel, the lyric poem, and the stage play as the only literary forms appropriate to modernity. It demonstrates this thesis through a comparative reading of the reinscription of the classical Arabic-Islamic concept of “adab” as “literature” in the modern, European sense in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran in the 19th to mid-20th centuries. It then turns to the Middle Eastern novel in the global contexts of its production, translation, circulation, and reception today. Through new readings of novels and other literary works by Abdelrahman Munif, Naguib Mahfouz, Orhan Pamuk, Azar Nafisi, Yasmin Crowther, and Marjane Satrapi, and with reference to landmarks of Middle Eastern and world literary history ranging from the Mu‘allaqāt and Alf Layla wa Layla to Don Quixote, it argues that these texts—like “world literature” itself—are constitutively haunted by specters of the literary forms and traditions, of the life-worlds that they expressed, cast aside by modernity. In the case of the Middle Eastern novel, it is adab and all that it encompassed in the classical Arab-Islamic world that is suppressed or othered, but that spectral, yet returns in new, genuinely worldly constellations of form.Less
This book draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida, and world-systems theory to address the institutionalized construct of “world literature” from its origins in Goethe and Marx to the present day. It argues that through its history, this construct has served to incorporate if not annul local literatures and the concept of “local literature” itself, and to universalize the novel, the lyric poem, and the stage play as the only literary forms appropriate to modernity. It demonstrates this thesis through a comparative reading of the reinscription of the classical Arabic-Islamic concept of “adab” as “literature” in the modern, European sense in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran in the 19th to mid-20th centuries. It then turns to the Middle Eastern novel in the global contexts of its production, translation, circulation, and reception today. Through new readings of novels and other literary works by Abdelrahman Munif, Naguib Mahfouz, Orhan Pamuk, Azar Nafisi, Yasmin Crowther, and Marjane Satrapi, and with reference to landmarks of Middle Eastern and world literary history ranging from the Mu‘allaqāt and Alf Layla wa Layla to Don Quixote, it argues that these texts—like “world literature” itself—are constitutively haunted by specters of the literary forms and traditions, of the life-worlds that they expressed, cast aside by modernity. In the case of the Middle Eastern novel, it is adab and all that it encompassed in the classical Arab-Islamic world that is suppressed or othered, but that spectral, yet returns in new, genuinely worldly constellations of form.
Rajendra Chitnis, Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Rhian Atkin, and Zoran Milutinovic (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620528
- eISBN:
- 9781789623864
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620528.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This volume examines how, why and with what success smaller European literatures – written in less well-known languages from less familiar traditions – endeavour through translation to reach ...
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This volume examines how, why and with what success smaller European literatures – written in less well-known languages from less familiar traditions – endeavour through translation to reach international readers. It argues that prevailing nation- and world-centred theoretical approaches have failed to provide an adequate understanding of the international circulation of these literatures, and instead advocates and models a comparative, interdisciplinary approach that consistently tests theory against concrete experience and practice, and combines literary, historiographical and translation methodologies to produce a far more precise analysis of the strategies, motivations, obstacles and patterns that emerge as these literatures strive to be heard. Through case studies drawn from over thirteen national contexts from Scandinavia and the Low Countries to the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe, the volume analyses how the international perceptions of these literatures are disadvantaged and distorted in theory, reception and industry practice, evaluates successes and failures as these literatures, through state and third-sector intervention and individual innovation, attempt to overcome their marginalization, and charts how the mould of our perception of these literatures might be broken.Less
This volume examines how, why and with what success smaller European literatures – written in less well-known languages from less familiar traditions – endeavour through translation to reach international readers. It argues that prevailing nation- and world-centred theoretical approaches have failed to provide an adequate understanding of the international circulation of these literatures, and instead advocates and models a comparative, interdisciplinary approach that consistently tests theory against concrete experience and practice, and combines literary, historiographical and translation methodologies to produce a far more precise analysis of the strategies, motivations, obstacles and patterns that emerge as these literatures strive to be heard. Through case studies drawn from over thirteen national contexts from Scandinavia and the Low Countries to the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe, the volume analyses how the international perceptions of these literatures are disadvantaged and distorted in theory, reception and industry practice, evaluates successes and failures as these literatures, through state and third-sector intervention and individual innovation, attempt to overcome their marginalization, and charts how the mould of our perception of these literatures might be broken.
Igor Narskij
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813175416
- eISBN:
- 9780813175447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813175416.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, Military History
Arguing that the war in the east has been overshadowed in public remembrance by literary depictions of the war on the western front, Eva Horn delves into novelistic portrayals of the eastern front. ...
More
Arguing that the war in the east has been overshadowed in public remembrance by literary depictions of the war on the western front, Eva Horn delves into novelistic portrayals of the eastern front. The chapter finds that, in contrast to the traumatic technologized trench warfare of the west, the “wild war” on the eastern front was “not a war of machines but a war of bodies and mentalities, not a war of nations but of ethnicities, not a war of destruction from a distance but a dirty, destructive interaction between enemies.”Less
Arguing that the war in the east has been overshadowed in public remembrance by literary depictions of the war on the western front, Eva Horn delves into novelistic portrayals of the eastern front. The chapter finds that, in contrast to the traumatic technologized trench warfare of the west, the “wild war” on the eastern front was “not a war of machines but a war of bodies and mentalities, not a war of nations but of ethnicities, not a war of destruction from a distance but a dirty, destructive interaction between enemies.”
Edgar Garcia
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226658971
- eISBN:
- 9780226659169
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226659169.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Indigenous sign-systems, such as pictographs, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and khipu, are usually understood as relics from an inaccessible past. That is far from the truth, however, as this book makes ...
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Indigenous sign-systems, such as pictographs, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and khipu, are usually understood as relics from an inaccessible past. That is far from the truth, however, as this book makes clear. Rather than being dead languages, these sign-systems have always been living, evolving signifiers, responsive to their circumstances and able to continuously redefine themselves and the nature of the world. The book tells the story of the present life of these sign-systems, examining the contemporary impact they have had on poetry, prose, visual art, legal philosophy, political activism, and environmental thinking. In doing so, this study brings together a wide range of indigenous and non-indigenous authors and artists of the Americas, from Aztec priests and Amazonian shamans to Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Jaime de Angulo, Charles Olson, Cy Twombly, Gloria Anzaldúa, William Burroughs, Louise Erdrich, Cecilia Vicuña, and many others. From these sources, the book depicts the culture of a modern, interconnected hemisphere, revealing that while these “signs of the Americas” have suffered expropriation, misuse, and mistranslation, they have also created their own systems of knowing and being. These indigenous systems help us to rethink categories of race, gender, nationalism, and history. Producing a new way of thinking about our interconnected hemisphere, this ambitious, energizing book redefines what constitutes a “world” in world literature.Less
Indigenous sign-systems, such as pictographs, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and khipu, are usually understood as relics from an inaccessible past. That is far from the truth, however, as this book makes clear. Rather than being dead languages, these sign-systems have always been living, evolving signifiers, responsive to their circumstances and able to continuously redefine themselves and the nature of the world. The book tells the story of the present life of these sign-systems, examining the contemporary impact they have had on poetry, prose, visual art, legal philosophy, political activism, and environmental thinking. In doing so, this study brings together a wide range of indigenous and non-indigenous authors and artists of the Americas, from Aztec priests and Amazonian shamans to Simon Ortiz, Gerald Vizenor, Jaime de Angulo, Charles Olson, Cy Twombly, Gloria Anzaldúa, William Burroughs, Louise Erdrich, Cecilia Vicuña, and many others. From these sources, the book depicts the culture of a modern, interconnected hemisphere, revealing that while these “signs of the Americas” have suffered expropriation, misuse, and mistranslation, they have also created their own systems of knowing and being. These indigenous systems help us to rethink categories of race, gender, nationalism, and history. Producing a new way of thinking about our interconnected hemisphere, this ambitious, energizing book redefines what constitutes a “world” in world literature.
Aarthi Vadde
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231180245
- eISBN:
- 9780231542562
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231180245.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The first chapter turns to Tagore, whose auto-translations stand as examples of degraded art both because translations fail to meet the criteria of aesthetic originality and because the critical ...
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The first chapter turns to Tagore, whose auto-translations stand as examples of degraded art both because translations fail to meet the criteria of aesthetic originality and because the critical consensus around Tagore’s English works is that they fail to transmit the beauty and flair of their Bengali originals. Rather than discount Tagore’s translations, I centralize them and examine how he turned unglamorous, second-order acts of literary production, such as compilation, translation, and editing, into modernist strategies for preserving linguistic difference and partial unintelligibility as a style of transnational contact across imperial lines of power. Through my close readings of Nationalism (1916) and The Home and the World (1919), I show how Tagore treated his Bengali originals not as hermetically-sealed, finished works of art, but rather as repositories of material. Their translation and rearrangement into English allowed him to mediate between utopian internationalisms that dreamed of perfect communication between nations and autarkic nationalisms that argued for the cultural self-sufficiency of the nation as a marker of its readiness for sovereignty. Against both these more absolutist positions of globalism and nationalism, Tagore’s auto-translations intervene with a model of national autonomy that precludes cultural organicism and a model of internationalism that makes imperfect communication a feature of globalized collectivity with which to grapple rather than an obstacle to overcome.Less
The first chapter turns to Tagore, whose auto-translations stand as examples of degraded art both because translations fail to meet the criteria of aesthetic originality and because the critical consensus around Tagore’s English works is that they fail to transmit the beauty and flair of their Bengali originals. Rather than discount Tagore’s translations, I centralize them and examine how he turned unglamorous, second-order acts of literary production, such as compilation, translation, and editing, into modernist strategies for preserving linguistic difference and partial unintelligibility as a style of transnational contact across imperial lines of power. Through my close readings of Nationalism (1916) and The Home and the World (1919), I show how Tagore treated his Bengali originals not as hermetically-sealed, finished works of art, but rather as repositories of material. Their translation and rearrangement into English allowed him to mediate between utopian internationalisms that dreamed of perfect communication between nations and autarkic nationalisms that argued for the cultural self-sufficiency of the nation as a marker of its readiness for sovereignty. Against both these more absolutist positions of globalism and nationalism, Tagore’s auto-translations intervene with a model of national autonomy that precludes cultural organicism and a model of internationalism that makes imperfect communication a feature of globalized collectivity with which to grapple rather than an obstacle to overcome.
Anne Lounsbery
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501747915
- eISBN:
- 9781501747946
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501747915.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This concluding chapter looks ahead at the trope's afterlives in the twentieth century, considering briefly how Silver Age and Soviet writers made use of the geographic imaginary that they inherited. ...
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This concluding chapter looks ahead at the trope's afterlives in the twentieth century, considering briefly how Silver Age and Soviet writers made use of the geographic imaginary that they inherited. In post-Soviet times, the provinces continue to accrue meanings both positive and negative. This is seen in books, films, and television series that veer back and forth between versions of the Silver Age myth (provintsiia as repository of purity and cultural authenticity) and much darker views that once again depict provintsiia as locus of degradation and moral decay. Finally, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the relationship between Russian provinciality and the problematic (Western) idea of “World Literature.” This in and of itself is a category from which Russian texts, no matter how “worldly” or how widely circulated, have been almost wholly excluded.Less
This concluding chapter looks ahead at the trope's afterlives in the twentieth century, considering briefly how Silver Age and Soviet writers made use of the geographic imaginary that they inherited. In post-Soviet times, the provinces continue to accrue meanings both positive and negative. This is seen in books, films, and television series that veer back and forth between versions of the Silver Age myth (provintsiia as repository of purity and cultural authenticity) and much darker views that once again depict provintsiia as locus of degradation and moral decay. Finally, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the relationship between Russian provinciality and the problematic (Western) idea of “World Literature.” This in and of itself is a category from which Russian texts, no matter how “worldly” or how widely circulated, have been almost wholly excluded.
Nicholas Halmi
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474439411
- eISBN:
- 9781474453806
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474439411.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The ageing Goethe was fascinated with Byron whom he called the greatest poetic talent. Though suspicious of Byron’s Philhellenism, Goethe found in Byron an openness to encounter non-English cultures, ...
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The ageing Goethe was fascinated with Byron whom he called the greatest poetic talent. Though suspicious of Byron’s Philhellenism, Goethe found in Byron an openness to encounter non-English cultures, an attentiveness to national histories and in interest in the relationship of the individual to social life. Byron’s self-contextualising, self-historicising narrative poems constitute a parallel to Goethe’s own literary campaigns for cross-cultural engagement in the 1810s and 1820s and, despite Byron’s alienation from England, offer hope for the prospects of what Goethe was to call “world literature”.Less
The ageing Goethe was fascinated with Byron whom he called the greatest poetic talent. Though suspicious of Byron’s Philhellenism, Goethe found in Byron an openness to encounter non-English cultures, an attentiveness to national histories and in interest in the relationship of the individual to social life. Byron’s self-contextualising, self-historicising narrative poems constitute a parallel to Goethe’s own literary campaigns for cross-cultural engagement in the 1810s and 1820s and, despite Byron’s alienation from England, offer hope for the prospects of what Goethe was to call “world literature”.
Ragini Mohite
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781949979060
- eISBN:
- 9781789629934
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781949979060.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introduction sets the stage for reading Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats transnationally. Beginning with their first meeting and collaboration, it contextualizes their place as important ...
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This introduction sets the stage for reading Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats transnationally. Beginning with their first meeting and collaboration, it contextualizes their place as important contributors to aesthetic modernisms while recognizing the impact of the socio-cultural and political conditions under which they were writing. Narratives of modernism and nationalism were in dialogue in their works, coming together to allow for a narrative that reconceptualized history and tradition in non-linear ways. These works were seeped in an understanding of the East-West relationship that took its cues from orientalism and Asianism. The introduction makes the case that the Tagore-Yeats relationship is a significant part of the transnational Indo-Irish axis in the twentieth century.Less
This introduction sets the stage for reading Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats transnationally. Beginning with their first meeting and collaboration, it contextualizes their place as important contributors to aesthetic modernisms while recognizing the impact of the socio-cultural and political conditions under which they were writing. Narratives of modernism and nationalism were in dialogue in their works, coming together to allow for a narrative that reconceptualized history and tradition in non-linear ways. These works were seeped in an understanding of the East-West relationship that took its cues from orientalism and Asianism. The introduction makes the case that the Tagore-Yeats relationship is a significant part of the transnational Indo-Irish axis in the twentieth century.
Paschalis Nikolaou
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620528
- eISBN:
- 9781789623864
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620528.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter focuses on a rare success story among the poetries of small European nations: the transition of the Greek C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) from national to global poet. The chapter shows how the ...
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This chapter focuses on a rare success story among the poetries of small European nations: the transition of the Greek C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) from national to global poet. The chapter shows how the poet’s status and image abroad is effectively defined by a synergy of actual translation and retranslation and diverse forms of imitation, which over the course of decades, and in a context of intense dialogue between literary systems, has changed Greek critical attitudes towards the poet and fostered international interest in Greek poetry. Centrally, Cavafy experiences fresh ‘translation’ in the poetry of others. In various examples where a poet’s encounter with Cavafy is dramatized in verse, the lines are blurred between appropriation, elective affinity and near-fictionalization. Anthologies of poetry inspired by Cavafy translated into Greek have changed his status in Greek literature and enhanced his myth. In turn, projects like 12 Greek Poems after Cavafy show how a poet’s presence within world literature creates interest in the inner workings of his or her national literature.Less
This chapter focuses on a rare success story among the poetries of small European nations: the transition of the Greek C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) from national to global poet. The chapter shows how the poet’s status and image abroad is effectively defined by a synergy of actual translation and retranslation and diverse forms of imitation, which over the course of decades, and in a context of intense dialogue between literary systems, has changed Greek critical attitudes towards the poet and fostered international interest in Greek poetry. Centrally, Cavafy experiences fresh ‘translation’ in the poetry of others. In various examples where a poet’s encounter with Cavafy is dramatized in verse, the lines are blurred between appropriation, elective affinity and near-fictionalization. Anthologies of poetry inspired by Cavafy translated into Greek have changed his status in Greek literature and enhanced his myth. In turn, projects like 12 Greek Poems after Cavafy show how a poet’s presence within world literature creates interest in the inner workings of his or her national literature.
Pamela L. Caughie and Diana L. Swanson (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780990895800
- eISBN:
- 9781781382400
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780990895800.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Virginia Woolf Writing the World addresses such themes as the creation of worlds through literary writing, Woolf’s reception as a world writer, world wars, and natural worlds in Woolf’s writings. The ...
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Virginia Woolf Writing the World addresses such themes as the creation of worlds through literary writing, Woolf’s reception as a world writer, world wars, and natural worlds in Woolf’s writings. The collection represents the theme of internationalism in Woolf’s work, but its global appeal is likewise reflected in the diverse range of contributors from around the world. The volume is divided into four themed sections: “War and Peace”; “World Writer(s),” which reads the Woolfs in a global context; “Animal and Natural Worlds,” which brings recent developments in ecocriticism and post-humanist studies to analysis of Woolf ’s writing; and “Writing and Worldmaking,” which addresses various aspects of genre, style, and composition. In addition to a myriad of historical perspectives, the book also brings us back to international and cultural conflicts in our own day, reminding us why Woolf still matters today.Less
Virginia Woolf Writing the World addresses such themes as the creation of worlds through literary writing, Woolf’s reception as a world writer, world wars, and natural worlds in Woolf’s writings. The collection represents the theme of internationalism in Woolf’s work, but its global appeal is likewise reflected in the diverse range of contributors from around the world. The volume is divided into four themed sections: “War and Peace”; “World Writer(s),” which reads the Woolfs in a global context; “Animal and Natural Worlds,” which brings recent developments in ecocriticism and post-humanist studies to analysis of Woolf ’s writing; and “Writing and Worldmaking,” which addresses various aspects of genre, style, and composition. In addition to a myriad of historical perspectives, the book also brings us back to international and cultural conflicts in our own day, reminding us why Woolf still matters today.
Raphael Dalleo (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781382967
- eISBN:
- 9781781384084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382967.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Postcolonial studies has taken a significant turn since 2000 from the post-structural focus on language and identity of the 1980s and 1990s to more materialist and sociological approaches. A key ...
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Postcolonial studies has taken a significant turn since 2000 from the post-structural focus on language and identity of the 1980s and 1990s to more materialist and sociological approaches. A key theorist in inspiring this innovative new scholarship has been Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu and Postcolonial Studies shows the emergence of this strand of postcolonialism through collecting texts that pioneered this approach—by Graham Huggan, Chris Bongie, and Sarah Brouillette—as well as emerging scholarship that follows the path these critics have established. This Bourdieu-inspired work examines the institutions that structure the creation, dissemination, and reception of world literature; the foundational values of the field and its sometimes ambivalent relationship to the popular; and the ways concepts like habitus, cultural capital, consecration and anamnesis can be deployed in reading postcolonial texts. Topics include explorations of the institutions of the field such as the B.B.C.’s Caribbean voices program and the South African publishing industry; analysis of Bourdieu’s fieldwork in Algeria during the decolonization era; and comparisons between Bourdieu’s work and alternative versions of literary sociology such as Pascale Casanova’s and Franco Moretti’s. The sociological approach to literature developed in the collected essays shows how, even if the commodification of postcolonialism threatens to neutralize the field’s potential for resistance and opposition, a renewed project of postcolonial critique can be built in the contaminated spaces of globalization.Less
Postcolonial studies has taken a significant turn since 2000 from the post-structural focus on language and identity of the 1980s and 1990s to more materialist and sociological approaches. A key theorist in inspiring this innovative new scholarship has been Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu and Postcolonial Studies shows the emergence of this strand of postcolonialism through collecting texts that pioneered this approach—by Graham Huggan, Chris Bongie, and Sarah Brouillette—as well as emerging scholarship that follows the path these critics have established. This Bourdieu-inspired work examines the institutions that structure the creation, dissemination, and reception of world literature; the foundational values of the field and its sometimes ambivalent relationship to the popular; and the ways concepts like habitus, cultural capital, consecration and anamnesis can be deployed in reading postcolonial texts. Topics include explorations of the institutions of the field such as the B.B.C.’s Caribbean voices program and the South African publishing industry; analysis of Bourdieu’s fieldwork in Algeria during the decolonization era; and comparisons between Bourdieu’s work and alternative versions of literary sociology such as Pascale Casanova’s and Franco Moretti’s. The sociological approach to literature developed in the collected essays shows how, even if the commodification of postcolonialism threatens to neutralize the field’s potential for resistance and opposition, a renewed project of postcolonial critique can be built in the contaminated spaces of globalization.
Paul Giles
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198830443
- eISBN:
- 9780191873652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198830443.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This concluding chapter takes its title from a book of photographs about Australia published in 1931 by E. O. Hoppé. The cover of The Fifth Continent showed the photographer atop a globe looking back ...
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This concluding chapter takes its title from a book of photographs about Australia published in 1931 by E. O. Hoppé. The cover of The Fifth Continent showed the photographer atop a globe looking back at a map of Australia, and it is this attempt to reconstitute the world in relation to alternative spatial perspectives that provided the impetus for Hoppé’s work. Similarly, to read authors such as Slessor or Dark in parallax with canonical types is not only to correlate relatively neglected figures with modernism’s larger orbit, but also to highlight various neglected aspects of more established writers, the complex ways in which their narratives face backwards as well as forwards. The particular force of backgazing within a sphere of modernism thus lies in the way it resists conventional classifications by projecting not an oppositional but a reversible world, one whose boundaries are rendered enigmatic.Less
This concluding chapter takes its title from a book of photographs about Australia published in 1931 by E. O. Hoppé. The cover of The Fifth Continent showed the photographer atop a globe looking back at a map of Australia, and it is this attempt to reconstitute the world in relation to alternative spatial perspectives that provided the impetus for Hoppé’s work. Similarly, to read authors such as Slessor or Dark in parallax with canonical types is not only to correlate relatively neglected figures with modernism’s larger orbit, but also to highlight various neglected aspects of more established writers, the complex ways in which their narratives face backwards as well as forwards. The particular force of backgazing within a sphere of modernism thus lies in the way it resists conventional classifications by projecting not an oppositional but a reversible world, one whose boundaries are rendered enigmatic.
William Marling
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190274146
- eISBN:
- 9780190274177
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190274146.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The romantic idea of the writer as an isolated genius has died, but there are few studies documenting the sociology of publishing, particularly the role of “gatekeeping.” How do friends, agents, ...
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The romantic idea of the writer as an isolated genius has died, but there are few studies documenting the sociology of publishing, particularly the role of “gatekeeping.” How do friends, agents, editors, translators, small publishers, and reviewers—not to mention the changes in technology, copyright, and the industry—shape the literary process? This matrix is further complicated when books cross cultural and language barriers—become part of World Literature. This study builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Collins, and David Damrosch, describing the multi-layered gatekeeping process after the 1960s. It focuses on Gabriel García Márquez, Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster, and Haruki Murakami. Tracing their rise, it takes issue with the interpretations of World Literature offered by Pascal Casanova and Franco Moretti. It poses four counter-examples in Rigoberta Menchu, Diane di Prima, Lydia Davis, and Banana Yoshimoto, showing that the genre is neither a “republic” nor a genre.Less
The romantic idea of the writer as an isolated genius has died, but there are few studies documenting the sociology of publishing, particularly the role of “gatekeeping.” How do friends, agents, editors, translators, small publishers, and reviewers—not to mention the changes in technology, copyright, and the industry—shape the literary process? This matrix is further complicated when books cross cultural and language barriers—become part of World Literature. This study builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Collins, and David Damrosch, describing the multi-layered gatekeeping process after the 1960s. It focuses on Gabriel García Márquez, Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster, and Haruki Murakami. Tracing their rise, it takes issue with the interpretations of World Literature offered by Pascal Casanova and Franco Moretti. It poses four counter-examples in Rigoberta Menchu, Diane di Prima, Lydia Davis, and Banana Yoshimoto, showing that the genre is neither a “republic” nor a genre.
Ragini Mohite
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781949979060
- eISBN:
- 9781789629934
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781949979060.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Modern Writers, Transnational Literatures offers a fresh critical perspective on the work of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats from the beginning of the twentieth century, the point at which their ...
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Modern Writers, Transnational Literatures offers a fresh critical perspective on the work of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats from the beginning of the twentieth century, the point at which their international collaborations most significantly influence the cross-border lives of their literature. This book foregrounds the Yeats-Tagore relationship, Yeats’s complex engagement with South Asia, the fraught beginning to Tagore’s international fame and the value of reading his English translations as independent products on the global stage.
Exploring the thematic parallels and generic innovations in the two authors’ works allows us to recognize the significant moments of tension, intersections, and divergence in their oeuvres. Engaging with their works across genres, with particular attention to the socio-cultural and political backgrounds of the time, this comparative study examines the transnational lives of the texts and provides a timely perspective on how aesthetic and cultural dialogues carry national conversations across borders and into the present day.Less
Modern Writers, Transnational Literatures offers a fresh critical perspective on the work of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats from the beginning of the twentieth century, the point at which their international collaborations most significantly influence the cross-border lives of their literature. This book foregrounds the Yeats-Tagore relationship, Yeats’s complex engagement with South Asia, the fraught beginning to Tagore’s international fame and the value of reading his English translations as independent products on the global stage.
Exploring the thematic parallels and generic innovations in the two authors’ works allows us to recognize the significant moments of tension, intersections, and divergence in their oeuvres. Engaging with their works across genres, with particular attention to the socio-cultural and political backgrounds of the time, this comparative study examines the transnational lives of the texts and provides a timely perspective on how aesthetic and cultural dialogues carry national conversations across borders and into the present day.