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This collection gives a diversified account of world literature, examining not only the rise of the concept, but also problems such as the relation between the local and the universal, and the tensions between national culture and global ethics. In this context, it focuses on the complex relationship between Chinese literature and world literature, not only in the sense of providing an exemplary case study, but also as an introspection and re-location of Chinese literature itself. The book activates the concept of world literature at a time when it is facing the rising modern day challenges of race, class and culture.
List of contents
Introduction: What Is World Literature?.- Comparative Literature and World Literature: From Goethe to Globalization.- The Location of World Literature.- Frames for World Literature.- World Literature and the Encounter with the Other: A Means or a Menace? A Benjaminian Horizon for the Question Concerning World Literature.- Ends and Beginnings of World Literature.- Some Remarks on the Concept of World Literature After 2000.- World Literature, Canon, and Literary Criticism.- Four Perspectives on World Literature: Reader, Producer, Text and System.- A World of Translation.- World Literature in Graphic Novels and Graphic Novels as World Literature.- Experiments in Cultural Connectivity: Early Twentieth-Century German-Jewish Thought Meets the Daodejing.- Ideographic Myth and Misconceptions about Chinese PoeticArt.- Chinese Literature as Part of World Literature.- How to Become World Literature?: Chinese Literature's Aspiration and Way to 'Step into the World'.- World Literature from and in China.
About the author
Weigui Fang is Distinguished Professor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature, Beijing Normal University, China. He is Changjiang Scholar and Director of the Center for Literature and the History of Ideas at BNU. As an internationally acclaimed comparatist, his research is focused on Comparative Literature, modern Chinese culture and literature, History of Concepts, Sociology of Literature, and international sinology. He has authored 8 books and published more than 100 scholarly papers.
Summary
This collection gives a diversified account of world literature, examining not only the rise of the concept, but also problems such as the relation between the local and the universal, and the tensions between national culture and global ethics. In this context, it focuses on the complex relationship between Chinese literature and world literature, not only in the sense of providing an exemplary case study, but also as an introspection and re-location of Chinese literature itself. The book activates the concept of world literature at a time when it is facing the rising modern day challenges of race, class and culture.
