The Locations of (World) Literature: Perspectives from Africa and South Asia

Orsini, Francesca; Zecchini, Laetitia

doi:10.1163/24056480-00401003

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…Peter McDonald discusses Tagore’s lecture ‘ Viśva-sahitya ’, which Rosinka Chaudhuri has also analysed perceptively in a recent issue of Interventions (Chaudhuri, 2020). Individual essays by Orsini and Zecchini focus on readings of world literature – mainly in the sense of the world’s literatures – in English, Hindi and Urdu periodicals from the 1920s to the 1940s (Orsini), and through the activities of the Indian PEN and Indian writers in English such as Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (Zecchini) (Orsini and Zecchini, 2019: 1–12; McDonald, 2019: 13–4; Orsini, 2019: 56–81; Zecchini, 2019: 82–106). Orsini’s essay offers a valuable contrast between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ readings of world literatures, from the ‘snippet views’ provided by the Modern Review, an English journal edited by Ramananda Chatterjee, through a Hindi ‘chronological and civilizational’ survey by Padumlal Punnalal Bakhshi titled Viśva-sahitya (1924, based on articles published in the journal Sarasvati , of which he was then editor), to the ‘eclectic and wide-ranging’ translations of world poetry by the Urdu poet Miraji, some published in periodicals, other perhaps intended for radio broadcasts.…”

Section: The Location Of Culture and Modernism In The Colonymentioning

confidence: 99%

Which world, whose literature?

Chaudhuri

2021

Thesis Eleven

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This essay argues that the ‘thought figure’ of world literature has been under incalculable strain from its inception, given the diversity of linguistic and cultural contexts within which it must be understood. After a brief introductory discussion of Rabindranath Tagore’s talk on world literature (1907), the essay goes on to connect world literature debates with those in global modernism, especially modernism in the colony. Looking at the networks of modernism, and the role of little magazines in India, particularly Bengal, in creating a sense of world literature through reviews and translations, it stresses the importance of location, language, and perspective in the wake of decolonization. However, in the present time of ecological and planetary crisis, with a global upsurge of xenophobia, insularity, and ethnic, racist, or communal violence, the notion of a world, or of a world literature, is hard to sustain.

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Section: The Location Of Culture and Modernism In The Colonymentioning

confidence: 99%

Which world, whose literature?

Chaudhuri

2021

Thesis Eleven

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Congolese Literature as Part of Planetary Literature

Riva

2021

J. World Lit.

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Historically and economically, the Congo has been considered one of the most internationalized states of Africa. The idea that African cultural plurality was minimized during the colonial era has to be reconsidered because textual negotiations and exchanges (cosmopolitan and vernacular, written and oral) have been frequent during and after colonization, mostly in urban areas. Through multilingual examples, this paper aims to question the co-construction of linguistic and literary pluralism in Congo and to advocate for the necessity of a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach, to understand the common life of African vernacular and cosmopolitan languages. I show that world literature models based on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of negotiation between center and periphery thus have to be replaced by a concept of multilingual global history. Finally, I propose the notion of “planetary literature” as a new way of understanding the interconnection between literatures taking care of the world.

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Geographies and Histories of World Literature in Interwar Italian Magazines

Billiani

2023

J. World Lit.

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This article adopts a historiographical approach to analyse some key debates on world literature that played out in literary and cultural magazines during the Italian Fascist dictatorship. It shows that by hosting such debates – especially on realism – in seemingly random fashion, literary and cultural magazines in the 1920s and 1930s significantly contributed to problematise the cultural politics of a xenophobic regime regarding the arts in general, and literature in particular. To this end, I focus on journals of different sizes, political orientations and visibility to provide different theorisations of world literature. Finally, by discussing the multiple epitomes of world literature that the magazines created, I question the presence of what may be considered a coherent national, or even canonical, literature to argue that world and national literatures could co-exist when made to function not just as literary but also as a cultural mechanism.

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The Locations of (World) Literature: Perspectives from Africa and South Asia

Cited by 3 publications

References 7 publications

Which world, whose literature?

Which world, whose literature?

Congolese Literature as Part of Planetary Literature

Geographies and Histories of World Literature in Interwar Italian Magazines

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