Literary Transnationalism(s)

Book excerpt: Goethe in 1827 famously claimed that national literatures did not mean very much anymore, and that the epoch of world literature was at hand. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, in the so-called "transnational turn" in literary studies, interest in world literature, and in how texts move beyond national or linguistic boundaries, has peaked. The authors of the 18 articles making up Literary Transnationalism(s) reflect on how literary texts move between cultures via translation, adaptation, and intertextual referencing, thus entering the field of world literature. The texts and subjects treated range from Caribbean, American, and Latin American literature to European migrant literatures, from the uses of pseudo-translations to the organizing principles of world histories of literature, from the dissemination of knowledge in the middle ages to circulation of literary journals and series in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contributors include, amongst others, Jean Bessière, Johan Callens, Reindert Dhondt, César Domínguez, Erica Durante, Ottmar Ette, Kathleen Gyssels, Reine Meylaerts, and Djelal Kadir. Authors discussed comprise, amongst others, Carlos Fuentes, Ernest Hemingway, Edouard Glissant.