Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. World Literature: History, concept, paradigm
2. Shifting focal points in the international canon
3. Migrant writers and cosmopolitan culture
4. Ethics and aesthetics in traumatic literature
Conclusion: Constellations as facts and experiments
Notes
References
Appendix: World Literature by Georg Brandes
Index
Thomsen develops the concept of constellations of books based on particular formal and thematic traits and shows how this works in relation to literature written by migrant writers and literature on genocides, wars and catastrophes.
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor with Special Responsibilities in Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark.
"Rosendahl Thomsen's book offers us, for the first time, a both
comprehensive and systematic overview of the history, and of the
different phenomena and the semantic layers of ‘World Literature'
today. This would already make his work truly important. But
Thomsen goes one decisive step further: he not only points to the
traumatic conditions that, in addition to the process of
'globalization', have permeated and founded the experience of
'World Literature'; he also proposes a new concept of literary
'constellations' that has the capacity to trigger and to orient
future empirical research. Altogether, this is an amazing début by
a young Danish scholar within the English-speaking scene of
Literary Criticism and Literary Theory."Professor Hans Ulrich
Gumbrecht, Albert Guérard Professor in Literature, Stanford
University, USA
"This wide-ranging, learned, and ambitious study makes an important
contribution to current debates on the concept of world literature.
Thomsen helps us better understand the formation and circulation of
literature in a globalizing world, through his compelling concept
of literary constellations that link works at a level between the
individual and the national. Set within a comprehensive and nuanced
view of existing scholarship, and illuminated with an impressive
variety of literary examples, Thomsen's study is sure to have wide
appeal both to students and teachers of comparative and world
literature. It will be a necessary addition to every university
library and to the personal library of everyone interested in world
literature - and in the creation of contemporary literature
generally."Professor David Damrosch, Department of English and
Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA
Mention -Chronicle of Higher Education, December 19, 2008
Mention -Book News, February 2009
"One urgent literary debate of the first decade of the 21st century
has been that surrounding "world literature": How is it to be
defined and constituted? What will be its inevitably changing
canon? What modes of interpretation are most appropriate to it?
Thomsen (Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark) discusses the "contested
paradigms" that structure this debate within various literary
disciplines. For example, scholars of comparative literature have
been seeking to shed its Eurocentrism and rejuvenate it without
turning their backs the achievements of Western writers; those
interested in postcolonial literature have had to confront the
dilemma of its status as a transnational migrant literature more
dependent on the major languages of Europe than on the national
literatures of former colonies. Drawing on the work of David
Damrosch (What Is World Literature?, 2003), important essays and
books by Franco Moretti and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and
Christopher Prendergast's edited volume Debating World Literature
(2004) and informed by changes in media and culture, this volume
ingeniously links national and transnational literatures and global
culture while assembling a useful list of formal and thematic
elements that will lead readers to engage with old and new texts in
new constellations and ways. Summing Up: Highly recommended.
Lower-division undergraduates through faculty."K. Tölölyan, CHOICE,
April 2009
"One urgent literary debate of the first decade of the 21st century
has been that surrounding "world literature": How is it to be
defined and constituted? What will be its inevitably changing
canon? What modes of interpretation are most appropriate to it?
Thomsen (Univ. of Aarhus, Denmark) discusses the "contested
paradigms" that structure this debate within various literary
disciplines. For example, scholars of comparative literature have
been seeking to shed its Eurocentrism and rejuvenate it without
turning their backs the achievements of Western writers; those
interested in postcolonial literature have had to confront the
dilemma of its status as a transnational migrant literature more
dependent on the major languages of Europe than on the national
literatures of former colonies. Drawing on the work of David
Damrosch (What Is World Literature?, 2003), important essays and
books by Franco Moretti and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and
Christopher Prendergast's edited volume Debating World Literature
(2004) and informed by changes in media and culture, this volume
ingeniously links national and transnational literatures and global
culture while assembling a useful list of formal and thematic
elements that will lead readers to engage with old and new texts in
new constellations and ways. Summing Up: Highly recommended.
Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." - K. Tölölyan,
CHOICE, April 2009
"Rosendahl Thomsen's Mapping World Literature is an important
contribution to our process of remapping... Thomsen's map has room
for "major" and "minor" literatures alike and develops new
coordinates that other worldly mapmakers will want to employ."
David Damrosch, Comparative Literature Studies
'Mapping World Literature provides a particularly innovative
approach to the field...[Thomsen's] concept of the ‘constellation'
provides a model of reading that permits proximity to individual
texts, whilst ensuring acknowledgement of the challenges of the
potentially global scale of world literature...'
*Charles Forsdick*
Reviewed in Routledge ABES
... wide-ranging and readable, and will undoubtedly be of value as
a starting point for scholars interested in the field. Thomsen's
underlying thinking is progressive and pragmatic, leading to ideas
which highlight the substantial potential of a reconfigured field
of world literary studies.
*Forum for Modern Language Studies*
"Thomsen's value is to inspire thought about how literature is
taught in relation to departments which owe an allegiance to a
national literature, and to think about the status of 'world
literature." Jeremy Tambling, MLR 104.3 2009
"In this important book, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen innovatively
applies the concept of literary constellations to trace revealing
patterns within world literature, with special relevance to
present-day cultural globalization. ... Overall, the book is
thoroughly thought-provoking in its international perspective on
literature, also reflected in the impressive range of its
bibliography and index, while the author's emphasis on the
construction of a methology opens up promising avenues for future
research." Natasha Grigorian, Journal of European Studies
"Thomsen's book methodically reviews the lineage of World
Literature as both a concept and label and succeeds in being
detailed without becoming hindered by the myriad dichotomies which
typify the term. The scope of this undertaking is ambitious and the
result is an opportunity for scholars of comparative literature to
consider new types of literary and cultural constellations
encompassing national, tranlational and global movements." Mark
Sullivan, The Comparatist
"Mads Rosendahl Thomsen's book is an impressive survey of the
growth of a new field of study, known as world literature. He takes
as his starting point the impossibility of ever comprehending the
whole of world literature, and sets out instead to trace paths
through the complex web of global writing. The book is divided
intelligently into four chapters, each of which surveys the field
from a particular perspective."Susan Bassnett, English Studies
Reviewed in English Studies, Vol. 91, no. 5, (Netherlands) ‘A
contribution to world literature'
"This volume ingeniously links national and transnational
literatures and global culture while assembling a useful list of
formal and thematic elements that will lead readers to engage
with old and new texts in new constellations and ways."
- Choice
*Choice*
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