Current Debates on World Literature - Einzelansicht

In recent years, the question of world literature has received a fair amount of attention. This is certainly due to the widely accepted notion that we live in a period of rapid `globalization`. Most analyses of globalization have, however, been conspicuously silent about the place of literature in an increasingly transnational and transcultural world. By drawing on works from the areas of comparative literature, translation studies and postcolonial studies, this seminar will assess a variety of attempts to put literature on the map of an apparently borderless world and offer some hypotheses concerning the place of literature in a global public sphere. We will work with one central literary reference text -- Derek Walcott's Omeros -- which we will read in light of a variety of theoretical models of world literature, including texts by, among others, Pascale Casanova, David Damrosch, Gayatri Spivak, Franco Moretti, Emily Apter, Alexander Beecroft and Pheng Cheah.

Please buy and read Derek Walcott, Omeros (1990); preferably the Farrar, Straus & Giroux edn.

More reading material will be made available on moodle at the beginning of the semester.

Regular and active participation, session chair and minutes.