World Literature as Discovery

Zhang Longxi is Xiaoxiang Chair Professor of Comparative Literature at Hunan Normal University in Changsha, China, and Chair Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Translation at the City University of Hong Kong. He is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and of Academia Europaea, and he was President of the International Comparative Literature Association for 2016–2019. He serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of World Literature and Advisory Editor of New Literary History. His publications include The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West (1992); Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West (2005); Unexpected Affinities: Reading across Cultures (2007); From Comparison to World Literature (2015); and A History of Chinese Literature (Routledge, 2023).

"Drawing on his deep knowledge of both Chinese and European literary traditions, Zhang Longxi advances a bracing vision of a non-Eurocentric canon of world literature, one that would build on the self-understandings of the world’s literary cultures rather than imposing Western values and concerns on them. World Literature as Discovery proposes both an expansive discovery of the world’s distinctive traditions and a rediscovery of the aesthetic pleasures that great works offer their readers."David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA, author of What Is World Literature? and Comparing the Literatures"A brilliant reconceptualization of world literature by a scholar that over the past 40 years has been one of the most active, erudite, and at the same time common sensical contributors to the field. Arguing the need for a wider inclusion of non-Western works in world literature while at the same time refusing to side-step the issues of translation and value judgments, Zhang’s volume is a must-read for all scholars and students of literature wanting to keep abreast of what really is at stake in our fast-changing world."Theo D’haen, Professor Emeritus of English, KU Leuven, Belgium, author of World Literature in an Age of Geopolitics"Zhang’s World Literature as Discovery is bound to invigorate the current debate on the importance of value judgements in the discourse of world literature. His is an impassioned and erudite intervention that urges us to reopen the question of the canon and argues for a truly plural world literature that draws its own sustainability from a body of texts far beyond the Western tradition."Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London, UK, author of The Birth and Death of Literary Theory: Regimes of Relevance in Russia and Beyond"Is it possible to have a worldly conversation about literary value – to free discussions of literary merit from their Eurocentric confines and to open our minds to multiple standards of literary judgement? The question is an important one for readers in our time, and Zhang Longxi, equally at home in the European and Chinese traditions (and beyond) is just the scholar to lead us towards an answer."Alexander Beecroft, Jessie Chapman Alcorn Memorial Professor of Foreign Languages, University of South Carolina, USA, author of An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present Day"[In] World Literature as Discovery: Expanding the World Literary Canon (2024), the distinguished Chinese comparatist Zhang Longxi makes an eloquent and sophisticated plea to move beyond the persistent Eurocentrism of world literature in favor of championing amore egalitarian, indeed planetary understanding of global literary production and excellence."Daniel Simon, World Literature Today

• Preface Goethe and Weltliteratur The Return to (World) Literature Circulation and Value Judgment Canon and the Classic World Literature as Discoveries Language, (Un)translatability and World Literature The Challenge of Writing a World Literary History Literary Universals The Mirror of Enigma and the Mirror of Magic Potion and Poison: Chinese and Shakespearean Dialectics Conclusion: World Literature and Cosmopolitanism BibliographyIndex