Contemporary World Literature Research Articles

The Nobel Prize and the Formation of Contemporary World Literature - Book Review

Book Details - Title: The Nobel Prize and the Formation of Contemporary World Literature ; Author: Paul Tenngart; Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 249 pages; Year of publication: 2024; ISBN:978-1-5013-8212-3 (hardback), 978-1-5013-8213-0 (eBook), 978-1-5013-8214-7 (PDF)

Joseph Reményi and socialist world literature

Hungarian American scholar, Joseph Reményi’s concepts of “minority literature,” “small nation literature,” and “world literatures” highlight the shift from the singular forms Deleuze and Guattari’s “minor literature,” Pascale Casanova’s “small literature,” and Marx and Engels and Karl Radek’s “world literature” to their plural counterparts. In the discourse on “minor literature” and “small literature,” Reményi offers a nuanced categorization of Hungarian literary production following the First World War. He delineates it into three distinct strands: “literature in Hungary,” “literature of Hungarian exiles,” and “Hungarian literature in the Successor States.” This tripartite classification not only encapsulates the varied loci of Hungarian literary expression but also underscores the emerging literary dichotomy between Hungarian and Slavic & Soviet literatures in the aftermath of the Second World War. As for “world literature”, Reményi’s conceptual framework, which pivots on the axes of “regionalism” and “internationalism,” segments world literature into four stratified layers: minority and marginal → local → national → world. This theoretical model facilitates a repositioning of the intrinsic diversities inherent within each stratum, mapping them onto a spectrum of diverse nations, cultural groups, and minority populations. Furthermore, Reményi’s concept of “world literatures” represents a shift from the singular notion of Geothe’s “eine allemeine Weltliteratur”, Marx and Engels’ “eine Weltliteratur”, and Radek’s “contemporary world literature” to a pluralized understanding. For “socialist literature”, Reményi’s categorization of Hungarian literature within the Western European tradition, as opposed to Eastern European literature, signifies the multifaceted nature of socialist literature. This concept, initially introduced by Marx and Engels in 1848, further elaborated by Radek in 1934, is eventually expanded by Reményi into a more pluralistic form as socialist literatures in 1956. The fusion of Reményi’s concept of “world literatures” and “socialist literatures” provided a gateway to construct Socialist World Literature.

World Literature Sickness: Exile and Dissent in Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s Call Me Zebra

ABSTRACT This article explores “literature sickness”, a term coined by the contemporary Iranian-American writer Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi and developed, I suggest, in her novel Call Me Zebra (2018). In doing so, it aims to offer not only an account of this novel, but to consider the radical potential of the condition Van der Vliet Oloomi outlines. This potential lies in the challenge to the dualism of reality and representation posed by literature sickness, an idea I develop comparatively via Call Me Zebra and the reflections on exile and, specifically, world literature in the work of Edward Said and Erich Auerbach. To develop these ideas further, I explore key concepts relating to the politics of world literature – exile, marginalization, and dissent. I focus on the work of Pascale Casanova to show how the concept of literature sickness that I develop in my readings of the novel relates to current debates in world literature theory. I position Call Me Zebra within a wider critical debate in order to argue that this novel offers a distinctive response to the Kantian dualism evoked in much contemporary world literature theory, one that I unpack using Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour. Deleuze’s philosophy of literature is central to my reading of Call Me Zebra, as it has distinct parallels with Zebra’s own theoretical musings. I use Deleuze to illustrate how, in the novel, Zebra’s exile gives her an especial perspective on oppression and marginalization, revealing literature’s capacity for imagining new futures and ways of belonging, and making Call Me Zebra a paradigmatic text of literature sickness and its radical potential.

THE PROBLEMS OF HARMONY AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FANTASY AND MYTH, FAIRY TALE, FICTION

The article scrutinizes the distinctions between myth, fairytale, and fantasy within the studyof the fantasy genre, an increasingly significant aspect of contemporary world and Kazakh literature. Fourpredominant perspectives on fantasy in modern literary studies are discussed. One viewpoint negates fantasy’sindependent literary status, deeming it a subset of fiction, supported by its widespread presence in modernliterature, films, and popular culture. Another perspective equates fantasy with fairytales, illustrated byJ.R.R. Tolkien’s initial classification of his works as “fairytales” before the term “fantasy” gained scholarlyrecognition. Some researchers argue that fantasy’s roots lie in mythology, specifically a “neomyth” born fromauthors’ mythological thinking and ancient myths. This viewpoint is deemed by the author to reveal the genesisand literary essence of fantasy most comprehensively. Lastly, a less supported view ties fantasy’s emergence tothe evolution of “horror” literature, inspired by 90s computer games, notably championed by the Polish futuristS.S. Lem. However, this perspective lacks substantial backing. The author of the article managed to give hisown, author’s definition of fantasy by analyzing the opinions of supporters of these four views on the fantasygenre. The scientific article discusses the problems of interrelation and differences between fantasy works frommythology, fairy tales and science fiction. The analysis of definitions and interpretations of literary scholars onthis issue is carried out. The author’s definition of the fantasy genre based on a comparative analysis of variousliterary genres is proposed. A comparative table of interrelationships and features of mythology, folklore andliterary fairy tales, science fiction, as well as the fantasy genre has been formed. It is concluded that fantasy isa syncretic, dynamic meta-genre that unites literature, philosophy, cultural studies, pedagogy, psychology, thefilm industry, animated films, computer games, entertainment and other areas.

Exploring Quicksand. Translation Criticism and Literary Criticism in the Face of the Petrification of Contemporary World Literature

In contemporary discussions on the condition and further perspectives of World Literature the moods of disappointment and disillusionment seem to dominate. Reservations concern World Literature in its complexity – its canon, potential multilingualism, existing hierarchies and often contradictory conceptualizations. The crisis of World Literature is not, however, the result of any given scandal, but rather of many years of progressive petrification resulting in actual monolingualism, formulaic narrative patterns, consolidation of the center-periphery hierarchy and abandonment of the real pluralism of interpretation. One of the areas that seems to meet the challenge of World Literature is undoubtedly translation criticism. Therefore, the aim of the article is to reflect on how contemporary theories and conceptualizations of World Literature as well as its farfetched utopia can benefit from translation criticism’s input. The article also argues that translation criticism may become a field that dynamizes contemporary World Literature and restores its reordering or even revolutionary potential.

From Czechoslovakia with Nightmares

Abstract This study follows the origins of and search for “Clock Man”, from a nineteenth century Yorkshire folktale to a 2012 forum post about a lost 1976 Czechoslovakian stop motion film, and evaluates its merits as a piece of contemporary world literature. The internet has significantly altered how people communicate and share stories, allowing a range of texts to be instantly created, disseminated and discussed around the world. As the classification and study of ‘world literature’ are affected by changing standards of communication and literary merit, these new media communications can provide contemporary insight into how literature may be found in virtual public spaces. This paper blends theories of literariness, reception and new media with Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of deterritorialization to track the changes in the “Clock Man” story and observe broader trends of contemporary world literature in digital storytelling spaces.

Analysis of the metaphorical meanings of symbols in Milan Kundera’s novels

Abstract Milan Kundera is one of the most influential writers in contemporary world literature. In his novels, there are many symbolic metaphors related to numbers, dreams, and animals. Combing through the plots of Kundera’s novels, we can discover that among all the numbers, seven and twenty are used most frequently. These two numbers have rich metaphorical meanings. Besides, there are many other digital metaphors in Kundera’s novels, including 6, 4, etc. Apart from number symbols, Kundera has also inserted various kinds of dream symbols in his artistic creation. For Kundera, dreams are not just an individual’s physical and psychological activities, but also a continuation and supplement of real life. It can be concluded that dream narration is a perfect medium for the author to express his philosophical ideology. In addition, dream symbols also serve as an important medium for Kundera to demonstrate narrative skills and present important themes. In Kundera’s novels, animal symbols are integrated with the plots, revealing the personal traits of the relevant characters, and mirroring their spiritual world at the same time. Besides, Kundera also expressed his ecological ethics through the narration of animals’ death. In conclusion, the metaphorical meanings of different symbols in Kundera’s novels play an active role in highlighting the themes, revealing the inner thoughts of the characters, showing the special features of the characters, and expressing the author’s philosophical thoughts. These symbols help Kundera to break the limitations of time and space, which has become an important part of his polyphonic art. What’s more, Kundera has also tried to expand the original metaphorical meanings of these symbols to create some new poetic meanings.

The journeys and the "rewriting" in Vertigo by W. G. Sebald

W.G. Sebald (1944–2001) is considered one of the important authors in German literature after World War II and also is a writer with a special influence in contemporary world literature. Sebald’s first prose work, Vertigo (Schwindel. Gefühle), carries in embryonic form all the motifs that can be encountered in the Sebaldian corpus, specifically the motif of travel, in close connection with the theme of memory. Based on the intertextuality approach, the article aims to interpret the relationship between different kinds of texts on the plot of many vertiginous journeys through space, time, and point out the borders between history and representation, text/image and reality, life, and writing. In doing this research, the author uses the qualitative method with a descriptive approach to disclose the discursive strategies of a superposition of text types in a highly complex narrative. The article has analyzed the plot’s structure of four parts and the overlapping text layers in the novel and found that Vertigo is written in travel style. The story is like a pilgrimage; however, the narrator is not a tourist, but like a “flâneur” on drift journeys (according to Guy Debord’s dérive theory). And Sebald, in a way, always tended to portray scenes haunted by grief and loss. The physical spaces in Sebald’s work are always inlaid with historical, cultural, metaphysical, and psychological sediments, making it not simply a place to visit. The Sebald-flâneur’s journey often deliberately drifts to the periphery, wandering in the edge, they are a traveller who does not intend to relax, whose movement is drawn from emotions arising from the outside landscape. Moreover, from the result of analysing Sebald’s narrative techniques, the author has demonstrated that Vertigo is also a hypertext, that every symbol in a text is also a collection of networks of links to innumerable other texts. It is a labyrinth expressing the concept of the “rewriting” of existing texts. Sebald seems to want to create a feeling of “schwindel” (vertigo) to encourage a viewing, which reads as if it were against the tyranny of a mono-discourse. The novel becomes a space for experiments to break down genre boundaries. The work is a warning for the “reading” since fiction could be nonfiction and vice versa. Therefore, this novel can be read as a collection of short stories with the idea: the “writing” merely “rewriting” over existing texts.

Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu. De la apelativul memoriei la emergența maximalistă

This paper aims at analyzing the connection between the contemporary Romanian literature and world literature through the emergence of maximalist novel embodied in Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu’s novel, Abraxas. The author belongs to the 2000 generation, a generation which has neglected the postmodern maximalist approach. Therefore, I intend to analyze the emergence of maximalism in Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu’s novel by indicating the tension it generated in regards with the previous minimalist formula and by observing the connection of literature with the socio-economic context of the 2000’s.

Introduction

Abstract This introduction examines the two main questions explored in the special issue: What does the Cold War’s interweaving of international politics and global war disclose about contemporary world literature discourse? What does world literature (as idea, program, and, more importantly, as reality of writing and reading beyond the framework of the nation-state) tell us about the Cold War and its discursive reliance on rhetorical ambiguity? We depart from the major approaches to literature’s relationship with the Cold War that focuses on how the latter is represented by literature or how literature responds to the Cold War. We also do not simplistically consider the Cold War as only naming an epoch in world history, or world literature as the totality of literary works and circulation networks spurred by a partly frozen global conflict at the heart of the twentieth century.

Jhumpa Lahiri. Translating Myself and Others

An eminent and popular voice in fiction, Jhumpa Lahiri, has also earned a prominent place in contemporary world literature as a translator—in fact, she says, ‘I was a translator before I was a writer’. Born to Indian Bengali parents in London in 1967, Lahiri has grappled with language since childhood. When she was three, her parents moved permanently to the US, and Lahiri grew up with a distinctive sense of shifting from one culture to another, from one language to another, her sense of self structured by the features and forms of different languages. Her entente with English and Bengali in childhood developed into a fascination with language learning, which ended in her enchantment with Italian. Lahiri’s love affair with Italian is beautifully illustrated in In Other Words (2016), a book that she wrote in Italian, which was translated into English by Ann Goldstein. Translating Myself and Others is to some extent an expansion of In Other Words, although the two books are different in style, form, and approach. The latest collection includes some powerful essays on the art of translation as well as on Lahiri’s personal investment in translating from Italian into English. She also offers deep and insightful discussion of relationships between originals and their translations, between a writer and a translator, on superiority and marginality, and also on the necessity of translation. In the first essay, ‘Why Italian’, Lahiri contemplates her growing love for Italian rather than English, her literary language, and Bengali, the language in which she communicated with her parents at home: ‘I am a writer without a true mother tongue’, she says, a writer ‘linguistically orphaned’ (10). She recalls the questions that were raised by her learning another language: ‘You’re of Indian origin, were born in London, raised in America. You write books in English. What does Italian have to do with any of that?’ (9). Even so, she persisted in gathering the details and subtleties that make for an Italian literary style. In the process, she thinks that her life ‘is a series of grafts, one after another’ (20).

Representing the true colors of Bai Xian-yong in the English language: “A Touch of Green” recounted

ABSTRACT Bai Xian-yong is one of the most important writers in contemporary Chinese and world literature. His masterpiece Taipei People, a collection of fourteen short stories, presents a gallery of Chinese mainland émigrés to Taiwan in 1949 in the wake of Chinese civil war. As a classic of Taiwanese modernism, Taipei People features an emotional sensitivity and a lingual novelty comparable to those of James Joyce’s Dubliners. Its English version was translated by the author and Patia Yasin, and edited by George Kao, the co-founder of Renditions. The paper attempts to compare and contrast the renowned short story, “A Touch of Green,” with its original Chinese, focusing on some sentences, phrases, proper nouns and the title itself, whose English renditions might not be considered tantamount to their original Chinese – a Chinese so crisply and creatively converging both classical beauty and colloquial flavor that only Bai Xian-yong the Chinese novelist knows how to craft. The research argues that if equivalent English rendition abiding by the principle of optimal fidelity exists as the promise land for the promotion of Taiwan literature across the world, future literary translators may need to adopt a multi-etymological strategy to represent the whole picture of Bai’s well-wrought works.

Introduction: Socialist World Literature

Introduction:Socialist World Literature Yanli He (bio) and Daniel W. Pratt (bio) This special issue of The Journal of Narrative Theory, "Socialist World Literature," opens a window onto World Literature from the socialist perspective, through a focus on Socialist Realism broadly considered.1 Socialist Realism as a genre has largely been pilloried in Western scholarship, with a few notable exceptions, such as in the work of Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko. Clark herself describes the reaction when she would tell someone that her research was "on the Soviet Soviet novel, on those hundreds of unreadable texts that serve as examples of Socialist Realism": there would be a "dreadful pause," presumably of disbelief that such works could be seriously studied (Clark ix). Clark describes Socialist Realism as a taboo topic in Western scholarship (ix), and this situation is still true to a certain degree to this day. However, such a dismissive approach to Socialist Realism belies the power that it had throughout the twentieth century, and not just as the official genre of Soviet literature from 1933 to 1988. Socialist Realism, along with the Soviet project more generally, represented an alternative to Western European cultural hegemony for much of the world. If Russia had been "belated," as it was so often described, then the Bolshevik Revolution and the new Proletarian art transformed it into a leader on the world-historical stage. Socialist Realism went hand in hand with anti-colonial movements, liberation struggles, and the voices of ignored and oppressed literati all over the world. This led to a construction of World Literature centered on Moscow instead of the West, with Socialist Realism being the foundational form radiating from the new center. [End Page 267] In the Socialist countries, reimagining World Literature started in the 1930s, as a method of battling rising nationalism and fascist movements. During the First Soviet Writers' Congress of 1934 in Moscow, the German/Soviet critic and Socialist activist Karl Radek delivered a lengthy address, "Contemporary World Literature and the Tasks of Proletarian Art." According to Radek, there were three important historical events in the twentieth century that formed the criteria of how to evaluate the progress of World Literature: "the World War, the October Revolution and the fascists' advent to power in a number of countries" (74). Radek criticized the content of World Literature during World War I because it "sang songs in praise of war," with only a few exceptions, such as Maxim Gorky and Martin Andersen Nexø, but he claimed that the February Revolutions started to "turn world literature against the wars" of imperialism and colonial oppression (78). Radek specifically announced a new line of Socialist World Literature in his speech. According to him, the October Revolution began to change the landscape of World Literature, at first only in the negative way, because bourgeois literature became "an object of libel" for treating the October Revolution as "a mutiny of slaves engineered by scoundrels" and "the progeny of hell" (86). The development of an alternative to the hegemonic culture, according to Radek, "disturbed the minds of the more reflective representatives of world literature far more than did the events of October 1917" (91). The rise of the Soviet Union contributed to the "split in world literature" into two forms: "the literature of decaying capitalism, inevitably evolving towards fascism, [and] the new proletarian literature" with Moscow at its center (94). Bourgeois literature lost its "monopoly in world literature," and "proletarian literature was beginning to spring up in all countries" (95). Writers from all over the world were turning to Moscow for inspiration, and not just any authors, but already world-famous writers, such as Theodore Dreiser, Nobel laureate Romain Rolland, future Nobel laureate André Gide, and others. Radek understood Socialist World Literature and Socialist Realism in particular as part of the battle against fascism. Anyone who had remained with bourgeois literature was now forced to "side with [fascists]," and "write from the viewpoint of [fascist] philosophy" or join the proletariat (109). Thus, only one month after German fascists came to power on January 30, 1933, they lit a bonfire of German and World Literature near the [End Page 268] square of the University of Berlin. The...

Looking Sideways to Italy in Contemporary World Literature

This article sketches a history of how the concept of Italy has travelled worldwide to become a mobile cultural symbol in order to show how, as a signifier, “Italy” has also become increasingly detached from any national parameters of territory. It employs a lateral method of “looking sideways” at literary representations of Italy from “outside” the national canon to show how they can put pressure on what (and where) Italian culture now resides. Analyzing three contemporary works of world literature partially set in Italy (Daša Drndić’s Trieste, Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, and Pajtim Statovci’s Crossing), it suggests that we might consider broadening out the canon of transnational Italian literature to include works neither written by Italians nor written in Italian, but that offer sideways insight into Italian history and culture from elsewhere.

Eksplorowanie ruchomych piasków. Krytyka przekładu i krytyka literacka wobec petryfikacji współczesnej literatury światowej

Exploring Quicksand. Translation Criticism and Literary Criticism in the Face of the Petrification of Contemporary World Literature In contemporary discussions on the condition and further perspectives of World Literature, the mood of disappointment and disillusionment seems to dominate. Reservations concern World Literature in its complexity – its canon, potential multilingualism, existing hierarchies and often contradictory conceptualizations. The crisis of World Literature is not, however, the result of a scandal, but rather of many years of progressive petrification resulting in actual monolingualism, formulaic narrative patterns, consolidation of the center-periphery hierarchy and abandonment of the real pluralism of interpretation. One of the areas that seems to meet the challenge of World Literature is undoubtedly translation criticism. Therefore, the aim of the article is to reflect on how contemporary theories and conceptualizations of World Literature as well as its far-fetched utopia can benefit from translation criticism’s input. The article also argues that translation criticism may become a field that dynamizes contemporary World Literature and restores its reordering or even revolutionary potential.

Violence in Vijay Tendulkar’s The Vulture: An Existential Phenomenon

In this paper a focus would be made to track the details of Contemporary World Literature in English as a whole with an inclination towards the theme of violence in Vijay Tendulkar’s The Vulture in particular. The Contemporary World Literature provides an insight into social, moral and political aspects of human culture which is why one can identify oneself with the rest of the human populace. In a way, the theme of violence acts as a stimulus in this direction. The world literature has contained ‘violence’ in terms of conflicts in all social levels, whether it is with oneself, between family members, between communities or between nations, since ages. Any such kind of conflict arises from negative emotions in an individual such as fear, distress and sorrow. As a result, the individual is likely to feel forsaken and helpless and may turn to the literature world in order to understand his/her own experiences and the similar experiences of others. This paper offers examples from the past, running through the Middle Ages and extending to the present time. Moreover, there is an explanation of how violence in the antiquity is different from the violence in the existing period. An existential approach is made while defining the same: which is a 20th century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of human existence struggling through making choices between destiny and free will. Beside this, a segment has been included that deals with the prevalence and type of violence found in Indian Writings in English highlighting patriarchal and communal issues.

Extractive Modernity at Large

The history of primitive accumulation, and Marx’s treatment of it, has in recent decades acquired a heightened critical resonance. Postcolonial thinkers have called attention to the persistence of colonial relations and processes in the moment of their supposed negation. Theorists of contemporary capitalism, meanwhile, have accented the reenactment, in the present, of putatively primordial modes of depredation. Primitive accumulation has likewise become a core concern of “world literature”, a cultural form – and hermeneutic orientation – that apprehends something of the world in its totality, the planetary shape or local articulation of the global capitalist order brought into being by empire and its afterlives. A unique strand of contemporary world literature, the novel of primitive accumulation traces the routes of continuity between original and latter-day histories of dispossession – the history of the present, and the presence of the past. The two novels I consider in this essay, Hernán Diaz’s In the Distance (2017) and Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 (2015), realize this two-fold ambit with a distinctive cogency. They represent, in particular, the advent and contemporary expression of what I want to call extractive modernity at large. Read together, these two novels reveal how the time–space of extraction is diffuse and perpetually reprised – even as they register its located origins and impacts. In so doing, these novels help clarify the particular languages of critique and struggle that emerge within, and begin to imagine a way beyond, both acute sites or instances of dispossession and the deeper, enduring history of primitive accumulation, its extractive forms in particular.

Вроджена цитомегаловірусна інфекція: рекомендації ICCRG та аспекти менеджменту, що знаходяться на етапі клінічних випробувань

Вроджена цитомегаловірусна (ЦМВ) інфекція залишається причиною сенсоневральної втрати слуху і аномалій розвитку нервової системи у новонароджених в розвинених країнах світу, що рідко діагностується. Відсутність уніфікованих рекомендацій негативно відбивається на глобальних зусиллях знизити частоту вроджених аномалій, асоційованих із ЦМВ. Власні катамнестичні спостереження за дітьми з мальформаціями нервової системи і сенсоневральними порушеннями, а також оцінка імунологічної відповіді на ЦМВ у вагітних і в період новонародженості ініціювали проведення поглибленого аналізу сучасної світової літератури. У статті подані напрямки мінімізації ризику вродженої цитомегаловірусної інфекції, що реалізуються в клінічних рекомендаціях, заснованих на висновках провідних світових експертів з виявлення та менеджменту вродженої цитомегаловірусної інфекції у вагітних і новонароджених, також окреслені перспективи менеджменту, що знаходяться на етапі клінічних випробувань.

Iovănel’s Sociology and the Utility of Pop Culture. Analyzing the Contemporary Understanding of Literary Marginality in Romania

This article analyzes the role of cultural sociology and elements of pop culture when exploring the current relationship between Romanian literature and the world literary system. I use Mihai Iovănel’s work (his recent History, as well as previous research) as a springboard into a discussion about the paradoxes and the disputes characterizing contemporary World Literature studies and I argue that his employment of materialism and cultural sociology alike helps move past some of the blind spots of the discipline. The final section of the article then shows that Iovănel’s focus on popular culture also informs his understanding of literary circulation, highlighting its unpredictable and non-linear nature.

Dream State in Urdu Novel and interpretation of Human Llife

This article underlines the significance of classic literature in contemporary world literature, Concept of dream in Urdu Novel. The relationship of dream with human life and also explain background of the concept of dream and its effects and importance in human life