week 1

1
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What is world literature?

• David Damrosch
• 1. world literature is an elliptical refraction
  of national literatures.
• 2. world literature is writing that gains in
  translation.
• 3. world literature is not a set canon of texts
  but a mode of reading a form of detached
  engagement with worlds beyond our own place and
  time

3
World literature vs. national literature?

• Comparatists in the postwar era oftenheld out
  messianic hopes for world literature as the cure
  of the ills of nationalistic separatism, jingoism
  and internecine violenceand, by implication,
  advancing the comparatist as the transcendent
  heir to the narrowness of monolingual
  specialization. 282
• Comparative literature as the grand corrective
  for the nationalistic heresy?

4
What does the ongoing vitality of national
literary traditions mean for the study of world
literature?

• World literature as an elliptical refraction of
  national literatures
• Virtually all literary works are born within what
  we would now call a national literature
• Works continue to bear the marks of their
  national origin even after they circulate into
  world literature, and yet these traces are
  increasingly diffused and become ever more
  sharply refracted as a work travels farther from
  home.

5
Negotiation between 2 different cultures

• The receiving culture can use the foreign
  material in all sorts of ways
• 1. as a positive model for the future development
  of its own tradition
• 2. as a negative case of a primitive, or
  decadent, strand that must be avoided
• 3. as an image of radical otherness against which
  the home tradition can more clearly be defined.
  283

6
World literature is thus always much about the
host cultures values and needs as it is about a
works source culture hence it is a double
refraction 283
7
Recognizing the ongoing, vital presence of the
national within the life of world literature
poses enormous problems for the study of world
literature

• Lack of time to learn about the cultural
  underpinnings of the chosen subjects
• Lack of time to learn different languages

8
Proposed Solution working collaboratively

• Work on world literature should be acknowledged
  as different in kind from work within a national
  tradition. 286
• 1. Selectivity a student of world literature has
  much to gain from an active engagement with
  specialized knowledge
• This knowledge is best deployed selectively, with
  a kind of scholarly tact. 286
• Reader should be spared the full force of our
  local knowledge. 287

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2. World literature is writing that gains in
translation

• A text is read as literature if we dwell on the
  beauties of its language, its form, and its
  themes, and dont take it as primarily factual in
  intent 288
• some works are so inextricably connected tot
  heir original language and moment that they
  really cannot be effectively translated at all.
  another way to approach untranslatability 288

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It is more accurate to say that some works are
not translatable without substantial loss, and so
they remain largely within their local or
national context, never achieving an effective
life as world literature

• Example ????,?
• http//video.google.com/videoplay?docid-845196248
  5484717627vtlfhlzh-TW

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Credit and loss in translation

• A work can hold a prominent place within its own
  culture but read poorly elsewhere, either because
  its language doesnt translate well or because
  its cultural assumptions dont travel. 289
• The balance of credit and loss remains a
  distinguishing mark of national versus world
  literature literature stays within its national
  or regional tradition when it usually loses in
  translation, whereas works become world
  literature when they gain on balance in
  translation, stylistic losses offset by an
  expansion in depth289

12
The need to engage translations

• Even with a major improvement in the breadth of
  language study, and even with a substantial
  increase in collaborative projects, it will be
  necessary to make active scholarly use of
  translation if we are not to continue cutting our
  topics down to the size of whatever linguistic
  bed is available to us at a given moment.

13

• It is only possible to engage critically with
  works in translation if we can allow that
  literary meaning exists on many levels of a work.
  Translation can never really succeed if a works
  meaning is taken to reside essentially in the
  local verbal texture of its original phrasing.
• Question the problem of misinterpretation/mistra
  nslation or abusive translation
• local verbal texture of original phrasing
• Question ambiguity of the text

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Translation creative interaction between the
reader and the text

• Not the loss of an unmediated original vision but
  instead a heightening of the naturally creative
  interaction of reader and text. 292
• The text exerts a powerful limiting force on the
  variability of readerly response. 292

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The use of translations

• To use translations means to accept the reality
  that texts come to us mediated by existing
  frameworks of reception and interpretation. We
  necessarily work in collaboration with others who
  have shaped what we read and how we read it. 298
• Benjamin The task of the translator, p.71

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World literature as a mode of reading

• The great conversation of world literature takes
  place on two very different levels among authors
  who know and react to one anothers work, and in
  the mind of the reader, where works meet and
  interact in ways that may have little to do with
  cultural and historical proximity. 298