“What isn’t World Literature?”
8 July
Presented in Part 2 of the Panel “Constructing ‘Worlds of Literature’”, moderated by Dustin Breitenwischer & Samira Spatzek. 17:00-19:30 (Berlin time).
The concept of world literature was long thought of primarily in terms of European literature, while in recent decades we’ve seen the rise of a competing conception of a more fully global world literature, arising from studies of postcoloniality and of globalization. Yet under both paradigms, it would often be more accurate to describe world literature as major-power literature. A challenge and opportunity for comparatists today is to incorporate a far fuller range of literatures in our studies, as I will illustrate with the examples of two major writers, England’s J.R.R. Tolkien and Thailand’s Kukrit Pramoj, and discuss some reasons why they have been equally absent, respectively, from both the European and the global canons of world literature.
Introduction by Dustin Breitenwischer, Former Postdoctoral Researcher RA 1 “Competing Communities”
David Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature at Harvard University and director of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature. He is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including What Is World Literature? (2003), The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (2007), Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age (2020), and the six-volume Longman Anthology of World Literature (2008). His new book, Around the World in 80 Books, is forthcoming from Penguin/Pelican in November.
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