How to Become World Literature: Chinese Literature’s Aspiration and Way to “Step into the World”

Abstract

Goethe’s theory of world literature has spurred Chinese literature’s desire to join the world in the last 100 years. From Zheng Zhenduo’s “unification of literature” in the early twentieth century to “stepping into world literature” in the 1980s, the “global elements of twentieth century Chinese literature” at the turn of the twenty-first century and finally the “communication of Chinese literature overseas” of recent years, it has been a constant feature of Chinese literature’s global trajectory. This desire implies a conception of the relationship between Chinese literature and world literature that has experienced a number of transitions, from idealism to realism, from cosmopolitanism to localism, from import to export, yet “becoming world literature” has remained a constant pursuit.