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Dialogue, movement, and world entanglement : towards a reconceptualization of world literature
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Herrmann, Elisabeth (2019) Dialogue, movement, and world entanglement : towards a reconceptualization of world literature. In: Lamping, D. and Tihanov, G., (eds.) Vergleichende Weltliteraturen – Comparative World Literatures. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag GmbH, pp. 59-79. ISBN 9783476049247
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Official URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1090781017
Abstract
In the attempt to explore the validity of the term ‘world literature’ for the 21st century we need to acknowledge two facts: Despite the continuing debates around the term, up until now ‘world literature’ has not been clearly defined as a concept or theory but remains an indeterminate and fluctuating term. It is, however, not just the performativity of the term’s meaning defined and used in different contexts in multiple, diverse and diverging ways that becomes the core of the definition. It is also the texts themselves, building an ever shifting and altering pool available to a global, likewise altering and never spatially comprehensive and inclusive audience, that cannot just be embraced as ‘world literature’ in the sense of an existing entity within itself. Instead, I argue, the term becomes meaningful when used to explore the dynamics of literature traveling the world, and its capacity to create new literary and social communities and vicinities, reaching beyond existing concepts of national, political, cultural, linguistic, and geographical location. In this chapter, I use Franz Kafka’s prose as a case study with which to explore the preconditions as well as the dynamics of a literature which was never intended to be received as world literature, but turned into world literature nonetheless. Kafka’s case is unique and representative at the same time. It offers a new understanding of world literature as a specific mode of writing through which a literary system is created that stands as a symbol for a real-life experience across systems. As is the case with Kafka’s literature, this symbolic system might operate even on a political level.
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > German Studies Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures |
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Publisher: | J.B. Metzler Verlag GmbH | ||||
Place of Publication: | Stuttgart | ||||
ISBN: | 9783476049247 | ||||
Book Title: | Vergleichende Weltliteraturen – Comparative World Literatures | ||||
Editor: | Lamping, D. and Tihanov, G. | ||||
Official Date: | August 2019 | ||||
Dates: |
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Page Range: | pp. 59-79 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1007/978-3-476-04925-4_5 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
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