"World Literatures Reimagined": Sara Suleri's Meatless Days and A. H. Tanpinar's Five Cities

Abstract

This essay investigates what differentiates the idea and practice of world literature(s) from those of national literatures, exile literature, and transnational or cosmopolitan literature. It identifies provincialism, Europolitanism, and the separation of literature and history as the primary factors that resist the prospects of world literature and short-circuit the interconnected synapses of life and the social imaginary. By examining Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days and A. H. Tanpınar’s Five Cities, Seyhan considers how a critical understanding of texts born at geographic peripheries or peripheral literary sites, yet outside provincial borders, endorses a vital engagement with world literature(s). A renewed reading of such works highlights their appointment with history and their reflection on the specificities of cultural variables that invest them with universal appeal.