Book contents
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Genealogies
- Part II Thinking the World
- 9 Does Poetry Make Worlds?
- 10 Ecosystems of World Literature
- 11 From World Literature to World Philosophy and Back Again
- 12 Saving Europe through Weltliteratur: The Case of Victor Klemperer
- 13 Viśvasāhitya: Rabindranath Tagore’s Idea of World Literature
- Part III Transregional Worlding
- Part IV Cartographic Shifts
- Part V World Literature and Translation
- Part VI Poetics, Genre, Intermediality
- Part VII Scales, Polysystems, Canons
- Part VIII Modes of Reading and Circulation
- Part IX The Worldly and the Planetary
- Index
- References
10 - Ecosystems of World Literature
from Part II - Thinking the World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2021
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Genealogies
- Part II Thinking the World
- 9 Does Poetry Make Worlds?
- 10 Ecosystems of World Literature
- 11 From World Literature to World Philosophy and Back Again
- 12 Saving Europe through Weltliteratur: The Case of Victor Klemperer
- 13 Viśvasāhitya: Rabindranath Tagore’s Idea of World Literature
- Part III Transregional Worlding
- Part IV Cartographic Shifts
- Part V World Literature and Translation
- Part VI Poetics, Genre, Intermediality
- Part VII Scales, Polysystems, Canons
- Part VIII Modes of Reading and Circulation
- Part IX The Worldly and the Planetary
- Index
- References
Summary
The inadequacies inherent in tracing literary history in purely national terms have been apparent ever since the emergence of national literature in the early nineteenth century: the problems caused by multilingual nations, authors, and texts; by multinational languages, and so on. If world literature is not merely to replicate the errors of national-literary analysis on a larger scale, then new geographies will be needed. Various options exist, from the “areas” of Area Studies (linked to a dubious model of “civilizational” contact and conflict), to “-spheres” and “-phones” (the Sinophone, the Anglosphere, etc.), to hemispheric and oceanic studies. Each of these approaches opens new perspectives – and creates new blind spots. I review an alternative model, which I have earlier proposed in my An Ecology of World Literature (Verso Books, 2015), which seeks instead to identify typological similarities between the “ecological” contexts in which literatures exist. These similarities are transhistoric and trans-continental, and while they do not provide a perfect substitute for geographically-based models in all circumstances, my ecological typology suggests new comparative possibilities for world literature.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 215 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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