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10 - Ecosystems of World Literature

from Part II - Thinking the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Alexander Beecroft
Edited by
Debjani Ganguly
Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

The inadequacies inherent in tracing literary history in purely national terms have been apparent ever since the emergence of national literature in the early nineteenth century: the problems caused by multilingual nations, authors, and texts; by multinational languages, and so on. If world literature is not merely to replicate the errors of national-literary analysis on a larger scale, then new geographies will be needed. Various options exist, from the “areas” of Area Studies (linked to a dubious model of “civilizational” contact and conflict), to “-spheres” and “-phones” (the Sinophone, the Anglosphere, etc.), to hemispheric and oceanic studies. Each of these approaches opens new perspectives – and creates new blind spots. I review an alternative model, which I have earlier proposed in my An Ecology of World Literature (Verso Books, 2015), which seeks instead to identify typological similarities between the “ecological” contexts in which literatures exist. These similarities are transhistoric and trans-continental, and while they do not provide a perfect substitute for geographically-based models in all circumstances, my ecological typology suggests new comparative possibilities for world literature.

Keywords

Premodernliterary ecologyarea studiesnational literaturecomparative literature
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The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 215 - 228
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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