Worlding World Literatures and Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

Abstract: In "Worlding World Literatures and Coetzee’s Disgrace" Miaomiao Wang explores the concept of world literature(s) as world-making activity, which gains in elliptical refraction, translation, and mode of reading. With the example of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Wang illustrates cultural variations between the original English text and the Chinese translation of Disgrace through cultural filtering and literary misreading. Further, Wang analyzes images of "otherness" in Coetzee’s text with regard to East Asia, especially in China, through the assimilation of the cultural rules of national literature and its literary discourse thus making it part of world literature. Wang argues that cultural variation and the images of otherness can be attributed global importance as an emerging world literary canon and its aesthetic ideology.