World Literature: The Unbearable Lightness of Thinking Globally

Abstract

Does literature have anything interesting to say about globalization? Is the work of literary critics germane to those analyzing today’s transnational flows of people, ideas, and goods? Many students of globalization, who work primarily in economics, political science, cultural studies, and journalism, would be skeptical of the claim that literary study could address their concerns. Indeed, they would be surprised to learn that Comparative Literature has been championing cosmopolitanism for more than a century, or that it had developed an international perspective on literary relations decades before they had. Comparative Literature, in fact, prefigured today’s transnational consciousness through its attempt to transcend the limits of individual national traditions and to investigate links among them.