E-raamat: Debating World Literature

Using Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur as a starting point, Prendergast (modern French literature, U. of Cambridge, UK) presents a collection of essays by 14 leading literary critics which explore the varied concepts of world literature, as seen from different parts of the world and points in history. The works consider a number of issues, including the legacy of Goethe's concept, interpretations of the concept of "literature," cross-cultural encounters, the nature of "small literatures," and the cultural politics of literary genres. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Goethe's Weltliteratur, and the cultural forms of globalization.

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. Its starting point is Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur, from which it travels out to various parts of the globe at different historical junctures. Its concerns include the legacy of Goethe's idea, variable understandings of the term "literature" itself, cross-cultural encounters (the contact of the oral and the written, the paradoxes of "exoticism"), the nature of "small literatures", and the cultural politics of literary genres (poetry and the novel). The underlying objective of the volume is to transcend the pieties and simplifications of polemic in a reach for the complexity embodied in the linking of the two terms "world" and "literature". Contributors: Benedict Anderson, Emily Apter, Stanley Corngold, Nicholas Dew, Simon Goldhill, Stephen Heath, Stephan Hoesel-Uhlig, Peter Madsen, Franco Moretti, Christopher Prendergast, Timothy J. Reiss, Bruce Clunies Ross, John Sturrock, Elisa Sampson Vera Tudela.