scholarly journals Introduction

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-141
Author(s):  
Sowon S. Park
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
Cultural Sphere

The essays collected in this special issue think about literature through the prism of script. The emphasis is primarily on the cultural sphere inscribed by Chinese characters, or the “Chinese Scriptworld” (漢字文化圈)—China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. All of the countries in this “scriptworld” use, or have used, Chinese characters for writing though each has its own distinct language(s). By examining the interrelations between writing, speech, thought and culture in and outside this region, the special issue investigates the significance of script and builds a case for the scriptworld as a useful analytical unit for world literature. A more complete study of world literatures, as classified by script, will bring a dimension that is currently missing from world literary theories of translation and circulation.

The global process of thinking global literature: from Marx’s Weltliteratur to Sarkozy’s littérature-monde

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jernej Habjan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global Approach ◽  
Global History ◽  
Global Literature ◽  
History Of Research ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

AbstractThis article outlines the history of research in global literature as a history that is itself global. This kind of global history of the theorization of global literature demands a departure from the existing accounts and their nascent gap between heated theoreticist debates and pacifying historicist anthologies. A global approach to the problematic can bridge this gap because it considers not only what the most influential studies on global literature say, but also where and when they say it. Whether these be Romantic assertions of world literature, post-war pleas for cosmopolitan literature, Cold War polemics about ‘Third World’ literature, or millennial theories of transnational, post-national, planetary, and, indeed, global literature, the article considers not only the object of these studies but also the studies themselves as an object; not only the text but also the context. Hence, a historicization of literary theories of globalization in effect bleeds into a historicization of globalization itself.

Yoko Tawada’s Kafka Kaikoku

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 454-474
Author(s):  
Arina Rotaru
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Franz Kafka ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
East And West

Despite the vast body of scholarship on Yoko Tawada, an author who writes in both German and Japanese, her work has not been examined in light of the question of modernity. Through a close reading of her play Kafka Kaikoku and an examination of recent world literary theories, this paper situates Tawada’s work in relation to a complicated nexus that features as protagonists two contemporaneous authors, Franz Kafka and Izumi Kyōka, engaging with their migrations between pre-modern and modern pasts. How does this complicated temporal dimension re-imagine putative divisions between East and West in relation to modernity and modernities, and how does that affect our understanding of world literature? My paper proposes the notion of “interlaced modernities” to address these questions and reflects on its implications for world literature.

From the Hashish in Breton to the Hashish in Golo

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-338
Author(s):  
May Hawas
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
World Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Mediator ◽  
French And English ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Modern Arabic

In the past decade a flurry of interest has appeared in the Surrealist Art and Liberty Group working in 1930s Egypt. Discussions of the circulation of Arabic literature have usually highlighted the important position of translation as cultural mediator. Thinking of modern Arabic literature as world literature obliges us to consider, however, that (colonial) languages such as French and English are in some ways creolized within, or inherent to, modern Arabic literature. The Surrealist practice of fluidity, that is, mixing artistic genres like literature and art, pushes interesting questions about the role of translation and bilingualism in Arabic world literature (or world literature written by Arabophone writers), and the need for language itself in world culture. For which national cultural sphere do we claim the work of the Egyptian Surrealists, and what kind of analytical mediator do we use to connect these works to others when translation is not available?

scholarly journals Embodied Social Cognition and Comparative Literature

Poetics Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Lisa Zunshine
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Cognitive Approaches ◽  
Cognitive Literary Studies ◽  
Social Mind

There is a growing sense among scholars working in cognitive literary studies that their assumptions and methodologies increasingly align them with another paradigmatically interdisciplinary field: comparative literature. This introduction to the special issue on cognitive approaches to comparative literature explores points of alignment between the two fields, outlining possible cognitivist interventions into debates that have been animating comparative literature, such as those concerning “universals,” politics of translatability (especially in the context of world literature), and practices of thinking across the boundaries of media. It discusses both fields’ indebtedness to cultural studies, as well as cognitive literary theorists’ commitment to historicizing and their sustained focus on the embodied social mind.

Introduction: France as a Laboratory of Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-96
Author(s):  
Michael Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
Funded Project ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
The Way

This article introduces the special issue of the journal on France as a Laboratory of Culture. It asks whether France continues to foster creativity and innovation in the cultural realm. Six articles examine case studies, including the role of women in the making of modern Paris, France’s role in world cinema through international co-production, French conceptions of world literature, recent fictional works by Alice Zeniter and Bessora, the rapper Abd al Malik as a complex example of hybrid music, and the state-funded project to create ÉcoQuartiers, or green neighbourhoods. These examples provide challenges to the way things are, whether in changing behaviours, tastes, perceptions or understandings, and demonstrate convincingly that France remains a vibrant laboratory of culture in the modern world.

scholarly journals The Many Scripts of the Chinese Scriptworld, the Epic of King Gesar, and World Literature

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Thornber
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
World Literature ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Chinese Script ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Many

The idea of an East Asian cultural “bloc” united in no small part by the Chinese script has long been widely held; through the end of the Qing dynasty Chinese characters served as the scripta franca for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese intellectuals. Yet writing in East Asia has almost always involved more than Chinese characters and their offshoots. The purpose of this article is twofold. First is to introduce readers of world literature unfamiliar with East Asia to the wide variety of the region’s languages and scripts. The second objective is to demonstrate that when we associate writing in China only with Chinese characters, as often has been the case, we overlook some of the region’s, and the world’s, most significant works of world literature. These include the twelfth-century Epic of King Gesar, a living epic which at twenty-five times the size of the Iliad is the world’s longest.

scholarly journals Dostoevsky in Kazakhstan: History of Study, Results, Prospects

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-423
Author(s):  
Kenzhekhan Slyamzhanovich Matyzhanov ◽  
Svetlana V. Ananyeva
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
World Literature ◽  
200Th Anniversary ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Village ◽  
History Of Study

The article is devoted to the analysis of the Semipalatinsk and Kuznetsk periods in the life and work of F.M. Dostoevsky. The purpose of the study is to reveal the Kazakh-Siberian periods in the fate of the Russian writer, their reflection in the letters and works of art by F.M. Dostoevsky. In the year of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Russian writer, we cannot talk about the complete study of the indicated periods of the life of the prose writer, which, of course, to one degree or another, were reflected in his prose. This determines the degree of novelty of this article. Dostoevsky is dear to Kazakhstan. He not only served his exile, but also found a friend here, sincere and quivering - the historian, orientalist, ethnographer Ch. Valikhanov. The stories Uncle's Dream and The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitant, the first chapters of Notes from the Dead House were written in Semipalatinsk. The story The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants (1857-1859) has the author's clarification: From the notes of the unknown. Many works of fiction in world literature are the result of travel notes, diaries. Undoubtedly, the restoration of the history of the Kazakh-Siberian period of the life and work of F.M. Dostoevsky is of great value, because the greatest Russian writer experienced spiritual revival there, in Kazahstan. The works of F.M. Dostoevsky were included in the literature program of secondary schools in Kazakhstan, translated into Kazakh ( The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov translated by N. Syzdykov). Dostoevsky scholars of Kazakhstan in the XXI century continue to study the writers works.

Response to Special Issue of Journal of World Literature on Literary Translingualism

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-224
Author(s):  
Steven G. Kellman
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Single Text

Abstract The articles in this special issue on Literary Translingualism by Helgesson and Kullberg, Robinson, Boyden, and Bodin all insist on language as fluid and non-discrete. What Boyden calls “amphilingualism” is a useful way to describe the porousness of languages. These and other scholars of translingualism are at odds with the ascendant nativism that is enforcing boundaries between nations and languages. Translations further problematize the sovereignty of language and national culture, and they are crucial to the process of elevating a text in the global hypercanon. What Bodin calls “heterographics,” the coexistence of separate scripts within a single text, is a useful extension of literary translingualism.

scholarly journals Water Enclosure and World-Literature: New Perspectives on Hydro-Power and World-Ecology

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 106
Author(s):  
Alexandra Campbell ◽  
Michael Paye
Keyword(s):  
Water Pollution ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Hydro Power ◽  
Blue Revolution

This editorial introduces the special issue, ‘World Literature and the Blue Humanities’. The authors articulate the commonalities and tensions between world literature, world-ecology, blue humanities, and hydrocultural approaches. Taking megadams, water pollution, and the blue revolution as baselines, we offer short analyses of works by Namwali Serpell, Craig Santos Perez, Jean Arasanayagam, Paul Greengrass, Wyl Menmuir, and Emily St. John Mandel in order to articulate how culture can both contest and normalize water enclosure. The piece ends with a brief summary of the contributions to the special issue.

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