Other Arts and Humanities | Open Access Articles

Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska Jun 2026

Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

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World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan Jun 2026

World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Some of the most influential pronouncements on world literature have been made by the kind of authors who are most likely to emerge as representatives of world literature once we agree on a definition, including Goethe, the young Marx, Tagore, Gorky, Hesse, Kundera, and the distinguished signatories of the manifesto for a world-literature in French. Breaking out of this vicious circle by referring to the authority of pure theorists of world literature is not the solution, as this would only pull us into a new vicious circle where most of these theorists would mostly remind us of the names that …

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A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson Jun 2026

A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Working with Fredric Jameson’s influential discussions of utopia and world literature, the essay suggests that the prospect of utopia is frightening and also possibly boring insofar as it threatens to drain away the already waning possibility of experience in a postmodern, globalized world. In this world, resentment of the present seems to go hand in hand with a nostalgia for a fictitious past, underscoring the difficulty of conceptualizing new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. Viewing world literature as a possible source of a new utopian thought, a utopia unlimited to its contemporary dystopian guises, the essay retraces Jameson’s pronouncements on …

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The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir Jun 2026

The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

During the interwar period (1918–1939), an international literary movement emerged in relation to internationalist and socialist politics and political struggles. Writers around the world saw themselves as contributors to a new proletarian moment within the historical unfolding of world literature. This movement was international, and writers situated on the peripheries of both the capitalist core and the emerging socialist world looked toward revolutionary Russia and other centers of the socialist world. This paper focuses on three such authors, the American Richard Wright, the Argentinian Roberto Arlt, and the Icelander Halldór Laxness. During the interwar period, all three were involved in …

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Zheng Zhenduo And The Problem Of Priority In World Literature, Daniel M. Dooghan Jun 2026

Zheng Zhenduo And The Problem Of Priority In World Literature, Daniel M. Dooghan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay investigates how Zheng Zhenduo (郑振铎 1898–1958) developed a theory of world literature in response to threats to China both politically from without and culturally from within. Centered on an analysis of his 1922 article “A View on the Unification of Literature” (Wenxue de tongyiguan 文學的統一觀), the essay argues that although Zheng believed like many of his contemporaries in the transformative effects of reading world literature in translation, that does not constitute the entirety of his theorization of world literature. Instead, he accepted the first-move advantage of other national literatures in defining both world literary standards and literature …

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An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin Jun 2026

An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The Vsemirnaia Literatura publishing house was founded in Petrograd by Maxim Gorky less than a year after the October Revolution. Aligned with the objectives of the new regime, its mission was to translate and publish a substantial body of European and Asian poetry and prose, thereby contributing to the broad cultural education of the emerging Soviet generations. These ambitions clearly reflect a key element of Gorky’s conception of culture as well: for Gorky, culture in its broadest sense (encompassing literature, art, music, and science) had the potential to unite humanity under the ideals of peace and harmony. Within this new …

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Introduction: World Literature As World Crisis, Jernej Habjan Jun 2026