Approaches To World Literature 1st Edition Joachim Kpper by Joachim Küpper 9783050062716, 9783050064956, 3050062711, 3050064951 instant download after payment.

[from Preface]

The present volume contains the revised versions of papers read at the conference “Approaches to World Literature,” generously funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which took place at the Dahlem Humanities Center and the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies in June 2012. Both institutions are based at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and are dedicated to the investigation of the principles of cultural dynamics, as well as to an internationally oriented type of comparative literary studies. The volume is the first in a series named “World Literatures” (edd. Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, Stefan Keppler-Tasaki and Joachim Küpper), in which outstanding dissertations, “second books” written by postdoctoral researchers, and selected conference proceedings pertaining to the topic emblematized in the series’ title will appear over the years to come.

The concept to which this volume and the series as a whole refer, “World Literature,” is frequently associated with Goethe’s name, though the central figure of German literary history did not create it, but rather helped popularizing it. Its basic idea, namely that the study of literature within the limits of boundaries defined by specific languages is largely insufficient, seems to be more relevant than ever in an age of all-encompassing globalization.

Present-day endeavors, however, have to go beyond the frames Goethe and his 19th century successors had in mind. They will aim at comprehending as “world literature” not only the texts produced in the larger Mediterranean world (which reaches from Egypt to Norway and from Portugal to the Euphrates, and has ramifications comprising the Americas and India); but rather integrate into literary studies also East Asian literatures, especially Japanese and Chinese.