World Literature in Theory

David Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is the founding general editor of the six-volume Longman Anthology of World Literature (2004), the editor of Teaching World Literature (2009), and co-editor of the Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature (2009). He is also the author of How to Read World Literature (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) and The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (2007). His current research projects include a book on the discipline of comparative literature and a book on the role of global scripts in the formation of national literatures. He is the founding director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University.

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• Introduction: World Literature in Theory and Practice 1Part One: Origins 131 Conversations with Eckermann on Weltliteratur (1827) 15Johann Wolfgang von Goethe2 The Emergence of Weltliteratur: Goethe and the Romantic School (2006) 22John Pizer3 Present Tasks of Comparative Literature (1877) 35Hugo Meltzl4 What is World Literature? (1886) 42Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett5 World Literature (1907) 47Rabindranath Tagore6 A View on the Unification of Literature (1922) 58Zheng ZhenduoPart Two: World Literature in the Age of Globalization 697 Reflections on Yiddish World Literature (1938–1939) 71Melekh Ravitsh and Borekh Rivkin8 Should We Rethink the Notion of World Literature? (1974) 85René Etiemble9 Constructing Comparables (2000) 99Marcel Detienne10 Traveling Theory (1982) 114Edward W. Said11 Toward World Literary Knowledges: Theory in the Age of Globalization (2010) 134Revathi Krishnaswamy12 Conjectures on World Literature (2000) and More Conjectures (2003) 159Franco Moretti13 World Literature without a Hyphen: Towards a Typology of Literary Systems (2008) 180Alexander Beecroft14 Literature as a World (2005) 192Pascale Casanova15 Globalization and Cultural Diversity in the Book Market: The Case of Literary Translations in the US and in France (2010) 209Gisèle Sapiro16 From Cultural Turn to Translational Turn: A Transnational Journey (2011) 234Susan BassnettPart Three: Debating World Literature 24717 Stepping Forward and Back: Issues and Possibilities for “World” Poetry (2004) 249Stephen Owen18 To World, to Globalize: World Literature’s Crossroads (2004) 264Djelal Kadir19 For a World-Literature in French (2007) 271Michel Le Bris et al.20 For a Living and Popular Francophonie (2007) 276Nicolas Sarkozy21 Francophonie and Universality: The Ideological Challenges of Littérature-monde (2009) 279Jacqueline Dutton22 Universalisms and Francophonies (2009) 293Françoise Lionnet23 Orientalism and the Institution of World Literatures (2010) 313Aamir R. Mufti24 Against World Literature (2013) 345Emily Apter25 Comparative Literature/World Literature: A Discussion (2011) 363Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and David DamroschPart Four: World Literature in the World 38926 The Argentine Writer and Tradition (1943) 391Jorge Luis Borges27 Cultures and Contexts (2001) 398Tania Franco Carvalhal28 An Idea of Literature: South Africa, India, the West (2001) 405Michael Chapman29 The Deterritorialization of American Literature (2007) 416Paul Giles30 Islamic Literary Networks in South and Southeast Asia (2010) 437Ronit Ricci31 Rethinking the World in World Literature: East Asia and Literary Contact Nebulae (2009) 460Karen Laura Thornber32 Global Cinema, World Cinema (2010) 480Denilson Lopes33 The Strategy of Digital Modernism: Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries’ Dakota (2008) 493       Jessica PressmanEpilogue: The Changing Concept of World Literature 513Zhang LongxiIndex 524