Contextualizing World Literature

Jean Bessière is a Professor emeritus in Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. He was the ICLA President from 1997 to 2000. He extensively lectured abroad. He coedited two ICLA books (Théorie littéraire: Problèmes et perspectives; Histoire des poétiques) and recently published Le Roman ou la problématicité du monde (2010), Questionner le roman (2012), Inactualité et originalité de la littérature française contemporaine (2014). Gerald Gillespie is emeritus professor of Comparative Literature and German studies at Stanford University and a former president of the International Comparative Literature Association. His recent publications include: Proust, Mann, Joyce in the Modernist Context (2nd ed., 2010); Ludwig Tieck's «Puss-in-Boots» and Theater of the Absurd (2013); The Nightwatches of Bonaventura (2013); and, as coed., Intersections, Interferences, Interdisciplines: Literature with Other Arts (2014).

This book revisits the notion of World Literature and its applications in Comparative Literature. It suggests the notion not as a means to sift out international paradigms for reading literatures, but as a set of guidelines for the construction of interlocking and/or reciprocally illuminating multilingual literary clusters. These ensembles are of very diverse shapes: the world, a region, a country, a language block, a network of cross-cultural "interferences" - while the so-called minor literatures invite to question the use of these ensembles. Within this frame, fourteen essays respond to the basic paradox of World Literature: how may specific methodological and critical outlooks allow expression of the universal? The answers to this question can be arranged in three groups: 1. Recognition of the need to break loose from European or Western critical perspectives; 2. Presentation of macro- and microcosmic dimensions connectedness and its processes; 3. Definitions of the methodological efforts and hermeneutic orientations to be applied.

14 scholars, from Europe, Asia, North and South America and Africa address issues in World Literature. They defend approaching the world-relatedness of non-Eurocentric cultures without blinkers, present the macro- and microcosmic dimensions of regional and world connectedness and its processes, and posit methodological and hermeneutic challenges.

Contents: Lisa Block de Behar : Henry James à la quête des universaux - Ipshita Chanda: "World Literature": A View from Outside the Window - Dorothy Figueira: "Salut au Monde": The World as Envisioned by World Literature - Eva Kushner: A Moving Target... - Haun Saussy: By Land or Sea: Models of World Literature - Manfred Schmeling : De la Weltliteratur en temps de guerre et de crise : Romain Rolland et Thomas Mann, un maillage international - Maria Alzira Seixo : L'effet-monde et le particulier littéraire - Steven Sondrup: Goethe, China, and World Literature - Monica Spiridon: The Well-Tempered Relativism, Or How to Compare the Incomparable - Micéala Symington: World Literature and Minor Literatures - Mario J. Valdés: Translation and Comparative Literature - Hein Viljoen: Caught in Complex Webs: World Literature - a South African Perspective.