National literatures as Intimate Expression and the Problem of Teaching World Literatures

Abstract

In her article National as Intimate Expression and the Problem of Teaching World Literatures Kette Thomas analyzes the fundamental tension embedded in the discourse on teaching world literatures. Thomas focuses on models which contextualize the problem around the subject of allegiance either to the reader or the author rather than the commonly limited geographical, national, and politically defined complex. Focus on the reader or author is often made at the expense of the other, but it is the tension and communication between them that offers possibilities for the development of the discipline of comparative literature (against Eurocentrism and the nation approach) and the fields of world literatures and comparative cultural studies.