1. WORLD LITERATURE Essay by the end of December, 2018 (misschacruz@gmail.com)

2. WORLD LITERATURE  11/11  René Étiemble: Do we have to revise the notion of World Literature? (1964)  George Steiner: A Footnote to Weltliteratur (1979)  A.Owen Aldrige: The Universal in Literature (1986)

3. WORLD LITERATURE 13/11 Zhang Lonxi: Toward Interpretative Pluralism (1992) Claudio Guillén: Weltliteratur (1993) Dionýz ´Durisin: World Literature as a target literary- historical category (1993)

4. WORLD LITERATURE 18/11 Franco Moretti: Conjectures on World Literature and More Conjectures (2000, 2003) Vilashi Cooppan: World literature and Global Theory: Comparative Literature for the New Millennium (2001) David Damrosch: What is World Literature (2003)

5. WORLD LITERATURE PRESENTATIONS 20/11 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Planetarity (2003) Gerard Holden: World Literature and World Politics: in Search of a Research Agenda (2003) Shu-mei Shih: Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition (2004)

6. WORLD LITERATURE PRESENTATIONS 25/11 Pascale Casanova: Literature as a World (2005) Nirvana Tanoukhi: The Scale of World Literature (2008) Mariano Siskind: The Globalization of the Novel and the Novelization of the Global: A Critique of World Literature (2010)

7. WORLD LITERATURE AND ITS PLACE IN GENERAL CULTURE, 1911 “And the theory on which a view of World Literature is to rest will resolve itself ultimately into two supplementary principles. One of these may be termed the National Literary Pedigree, the train of historic considerations that connects the reader’s nationality with its roots in the far past, and traces its relationship

8. AUERBACH Humanity as a common conversation among humans  A single shared global culture is precisely not a weltliteratur Our shared participation in an ongoing seminar on world history  Philology’s special role and relation to history How to accomplish a major work of synthesis A point of departure should have  Concreteness and precision  Potential for centrifugal radiation

9. AUERBACH A scientifically ordered and conducted research of reality fills and rules our life; it is, if one wishes to name one, our Myth: we do not possess another that has such general validity. History is the science of reality that affects us most immediately, stirs us most deeply and compels us most forcibly to a consciousness of ourselves. … Whatever we are, we became in history, and only in history can we remain the way we are and develop therefrom: it is the task of philologists, whose province is the world of human history, to demonstrate this so that it penetrates our lives unforgettably. (5-6)

10. ANSATZPUNKT World literature an individual inquiry because relies heavily on personal intuition Traditional divisions of material no longer useful, whether chronological, geographical or typological

11. ANSATZPUNKT In order to accomplish a major work of synthesis it is imperative to locate a point of departure, a handle, as it were, by which the subject can be seized. The point of departure must be the election of a firmly circumscribed, easily comprehensible set of phenomena whose interpretation is a radiation out from them and which orders and interprets a greater region than they themselves occupy. … a comparatively modest general knowledge buttressed by advice can suffice once intuition has found an auspicious point of departure. … It is therefore a question of specialization—not a specializing of the traditional modes of classifying material—but of the subject at hand, which needs constant rediscovery. (14-15)

12. ANSATZPUNKT Potential for centrifugal radiation Concreteness and precision

13. ANSATZPUNKT A good point of departure must be exact and objective; abstract categories of one sort or another will not serve. … For a point of departure should not be a generality imposed on a theme from outside, but out rather to be an organic inner part of the theme itself. What is being studied should speak for itself, but that can never happen if the point of departure is neither concrete nor clearly defined. (16)

14. DISTANT READING Ready-made, though rarely suitable, concepts whose appeal is deceptive because it is based on their attractive sound and their modishness, lie in wait, ready to spring in on the work of a scholar who has lost contact with the energy of object of study. Thus the writer of a scholarly work is often ricked into accepting the substitution of a cliché for the true object; surely a great many readers can also be deceived. (Auerbach 16)

15. SAID discrepant but interacting experiences  affirming interaction and interdependence, avoiding the politics of blame  experiences of imperialism that involve sympathy and congruence, dialogue and communication Identities understood as not essences but “contrapuntal ensembles” (52)  “structures of attitude and reference” (52)

16. SAID Structure of the assigned extract  Why, for Said, does the issue of world literature appear only in the fifth section?  Goethe’s weltliteratur waffled between great books and comprehensive synthesis of everything Imperialism, ideology, the worldliness of any text his readings  two worlds in one text: Heart of Darkness  one world, two texts: Description de l’Egypte and Aja’ib al-Athar

17. GRAPHS AND LITERARY STUDIES the idea that the comparative study of literature could furnish a trans-national, even trans-human perspective on literary performance. Thus the idea of comparative literature not only expressed universality and the kind of understanding gained by philologists about language families, but also symbolized the crisis-free serenity of an almost ideal realm. Standing above the small-minded political affairs were both a kind of anthropological Eden in which men and women happily produced something called literature, and a world… designated as that of “culture,” where only “the best that is thought and known” could be admitted. (Said 45)

18. CONTRAPUNTAL READING

19. 1970S AND 1980S the dramatic change in emphasis and, quite literally, direction among thinkers noted for their radicalism. … Foucault also turned his attention away from the oppositional forces in modern society which he had studied for their undeterred resistance to exclusion and confinement… and decided that since power was everywhere it was probably better to concentrate on the individual. The self was therefore to be studied, cultivated, and, if necessary, refashioned and constituted. In both Lyotard and Foucault we find precisely the same trope employed to explain the disappointment in the politics of liberation: narrative, which posits an enabling beginning point and a vindicating goal, is no longer adequate for plotting the human trajectory. … One began to hear and read how futile it was to support revolutions, how barbaric were the new regimes that came to power…. (26-7)

20. MORETTI Trees need geographical discontinuity…; waves dislike barriers, and thrive on geographical continuity…. Trees and branches are what nation- states cling to; waves are what markets do. … Cultural history is made of trees and waves…. This, then, is the basis for the division of labor between national and world literature: national literature, for people who see trees; world literature, for people who see waves. (68)

21. DISTANCE AND DETACHMENT The genuinely profound scholarship of the people who believed in and practiced Weltliteratur implied the extraordinary privilege of an observer located in the West who could actually survey the world’s literary output with a kind of sovereign detachment. (Said 48) literary history will quickly become very different from what it is now: it will become ‘second hand’: a patchwork of other people’s research, without a single direct textual reading. Still ambitious, and actually even more so than before (world literature!); but the ambition is now directly proportional to the distance from the text: the more ambitious the project, the greater must the distance be. (Moretti 57)

22. MORETTI’S GRAPHS To speak of comparative literature therefore was to speak of the interaction of world literatures with one another, but the field was epistemologically organized as a sort of hierarchy, with Europe and its Latin Christian literatures at its center and top. (Said 45)

23. LAW OF LITERARY EVOLUTION the modern novel first arises not as an autonomous development but as a compromise between a western formal influence (usually French or English) and local materials. (58)

24. WORLD LITERATURE AND ITS PLACE IN GENERAL CULTURE, 1911 with other parts of the literary field. Here we are on the sure basis of history. But it will be history seen from the standpoint of literature: literary predigee may be very different from ethnological or linguistic descent. The other principle is Intrinsic Literary Interest. The individuality of the author..or the accidental flowering of

25. WORLD LITERATURE AND ITS PLACE IN GENERAL CULTURE, 1911 Some literary type may lift portions of a literature quite out of the position that would have been given them by their historical settings,” (p.31)

26. ALBERT GUÉRARD (1880-1959) Preface to World Literature, 1940: 1. Universal literature 2.World Literature 3.Comparative Literature 4. General Literature

27. METHOD AND METAPHOR Auerbach (1952): philology  Ansatzpunkt Moretti (2000): distant reading  Waves, trees Said (1993): contrapuntal reading  Overlapping territories, intertwined histories

28. Philology and Weltliteratur, 1952 Thousand of years is the history of mankind achieving self-expression: this is what philology, a historicist discipline. (p.67)

29. WORLD LITERATURE

30. World Literature LITTERATURA LITTERA LETTER CLASSIC HISTORY TRADITIONS DIVERSE LIFE STORIES BELIEFS CANONICALMASTERPIECE WINDOWS TO THE WORLD CULTURE

31. LITERATURE

37. RICHARD GREEN MOULTON (1849-1924) World Literature and Its Place in General Culture, 1911: “I take a distinction between Universal Literature and World Literature. Universal Literature can only mean the sum total of all literatures. World Literature, as I use the term, is this Universal Literature seen in perspective from a given point of view, presumably the national standpoint of observer.”(p.31)

38. Fritz Strich (1883-1963) World Literature and Comparative Literary History (1930) “But Europe is not the world, and the question should precisely be asked whether world literature does not really begin where the borders of Europe are being transcended.” (p.38)

39. “When does a national literature gain entry to world literature so conceived, and why does it do so at that particular moment? What did one nation give to the others, what did it receive from these others, and on which basis did this exchange happen?” (p.39) WORLD LITERATURE AND COMPARATIVE LITERARY HISTORY (1930)

40. “World literature in the sense we have just given to this ambiguous concept is then the literature that on the basis of its national and general human dimension achieves a validity transcending space and time.” (p.44) WORLD LITERATURE AND COMPARATIVE LITERARY HISTORY (1930)

41. Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) Philology and Weltliteratur, 1952: History is the science of reality that affects us most immediately, stirs us most deeply and compels us most forcibly to a consciousness of ourselves. Under the rubric of history one is to understand not only the past, but the progression of events in general; history therefore includes the present.

42. The Question… It is time to ask what meaning the world Weltliteratur can still have if we relate it, as Goethe did, both to the past and to the future. Our earth, the domain of Weltliteratur, is growing smaller and losing its diversity. Yet Weltliteratur does not merely refer to what is generically common and human; rather it considers humanity to be the product of fruitful intercourse between its members.” (Auerbach 2, 1952)

43. COLLAB RESEARCH WITH A BUDDY!  What is a Masterpiece? A Literary classic?  What is milieu? Ancient, medieval and contemporary periods?

44. COLLAB RESEARCH WITH FIVIES!  What are the factors influencing the existence of literature?  How does World literature develop throughout the history?  What are the significant events that influenced World literature? Create a diagram showing answers to the following:

45. WHAT IS WORLD LITERATURE? World lit is  Work that circulates beyond its culture of origin  A mode of circulation and of reading Existing definitions:  Established body of classics  Evolving canon of masterpieces  Multiple windows on the world

46. WHAT IS WORLD LITERATURE? World literature consists of more than the mainstream works, including works from minority authors or authors from different countries around the world, with a unique historical perspective. Essentially, world literature is literature that seeks to show a variety of perspectives.

47. WORLD LITERATURE MOVEMENTS

51. JOURNAL TIME! Goethe 1827, Marx and Engels 1847  Universal literature, expresses humanity  A concert among all literature produced “by man about man”  Not a selective collection of great books or world classics, nor a best-of collection WELTLITERATUR

52. The Question… “What to read and what to do with that reading, that is the full form of the question.” (Said 60, 1993) “The question is not really what we should do—the question is how.” (Moretti 54-55, 2000)

53. ANCIENT LITERATURE  Mesopotamiam  Egyptian  Hebrew

54. THE ANCIENT LITERATURE AND HISTORICAL RECORDS HELP US UNDERSTAND THE CULTURE AND WISDOM OF THESE PEOPLE

56. ONE LAND AND TWO RIVERS “land between the rivers” Mesopotamia means = –Tigris River and Euphrates River a year and left thick bed of silt. Both rivers flooded once – Silt: rich, new soil farmers could plant and harvest enormous quantities of wheat and barley

59. THE SUMERIANS WERE THE FIRST TO SETTLE IN THE MESOPOTAMIA SUMERIANS LIVED IN CITY-STATES BUILT AROUND ZIGGURATS

60. ZIGGURAT

61. HODGES, LIBRARY, UTAH

62. CULTURE SUMERIAN’S CREATED... BEATUIFUL STONE AND METAL WORK SCULPTURES THE TWELVE MONTH CALENDAR THE FIRST WRITING SYSTEM: CUNEIFORM

63. POLITICS Power of the Priests - Sumer’s earliest governments were controlled by temple priests - Farmers believed they needed blessings for success of their crops - Priests were the middle man for the Gods - Priests demanded portion of farmer crops as tax