Debating World Literature

by Christopher Prendergast (Editor), Benedict Anderson, Emily Apter (Contribution by)

In the continuing debates about the cultural dimensions of globalization, the question of ‘literature’ has been something of a poor relation. This volume seeks to redress the balance. It takes as its starting point Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur, from which it then travels out to various parts of the globe at different historical junctures. Among its many concerns are the legacies of Goethe’s idea, variable understandings of the term ‘literature’ itself, cross-cultural encounters, the nature of ‘small literatures’, and the cultural politics of literary genres. With contributions from many of the leading voices in the field, Debating World Literature seeks to transcend the pieties and simplifications of polemic in a search for the complexity embodied in the linking of the two terms ‘world’ and ‘literature’.

Genres: Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2004

Reviews

[Nora · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. Bordering on useless. There are solid and interesting notions in the essays I looked over, but they are so obnoxiously presented and so clearly hell-bent on limiting the discourse to the contributors and their half-dozen academic acquaintences, high-fiving each other for their acadmic prowess in department offices, that it's hardly worth the trouble for me or my students. Sometimes academic essays like these are over the readers' heads. And sometimes, as in this case, they're pompous and not conducive to a larger conversation.

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile set of essays on the theory and practice of world literature.

[Iftekhar Mallick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it during my Undergraduate Sociology classes. It gave me some good insights to prepare my course project paper, "A Study on Reflections of Society in Bangladeshi Literature".