World Literature and East Asian Literatures

Abstract

The relationship between world literature and East Asian literatures can be conceived of in multiple ways. World literature fundamentally enabled the birth of “literature” in its modern, aesthetic sense in East Asia, while the transformations of modern literature across the region furnished various significances to the concept of world literature. The conception of world literature, therefore, changed according to the kinds of literature that the shifting sociopolitical circumstances and exigencies called for. For East Asian literatures, then, world literature has been an ever-changing discourse since its introduction, constantly acquiring new meanings. The nation-based discourse of literary history, which was introduced into East Asia from Europe in the late nineteenth century, functions as the hinge between premodern East Asian literatures and world literature. The centrality of the positions that the Chinese Classics occupy in the literary Sinosphere depends on actual literary practices on the peripheries.