Description
Book SynopsisThough literature is not a technology, the historical models literary scholars use to describe literary history owe a great deal to the languages of originality, novelty, progress, and invention that core of the idea of technological development. No real surprise: putting progress at the center of historicity is one of the things that makes us moderns. But if you think like a modern person then it''s very hard to ever really make a good case for why someone interested in the history of modern literary aesthetics ought to read the literature of the non-Western world.On Literary Worlds makes that case. It does so by rethinking from the ground up our concepts of literary history and progress, redescribing the history we know (or think we know) in a new language that requires us to be far more worldly and global in our arguments about literary change. To do, so, the book begins with an argument that literature is a world-creating activity. If that is true, then a number of scientific and e
Trade Reviewhighly informed, provocative, and relevant to advanced readers engaged in the study of linguistics and world literature from the perspective of postmodern theory. * L. A. Brewer, Choice *
This is cleary meant to be a thought-provoking book, and it succeeds in that ambition. * Alexander Beecroft, Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Preface ; Part I: Literary Worlds ; 1 The World and the Work of Art ; 2 Worlds, Literature, Systems ; 3 Literary Worlds ; 4 First Propositions ; 5 Aspects of Worldedness ; Part II: Modes of Modern Literature ; 6 The Planet and the World ; 7 Universalism as a World View ; 8 Realism, Romanticism, Modernism ; 9 Six Variables, Three Modes ; Part III: Ideologies of the Institution ; 10 Against Periodization ; 11 Institutional Problems Require Institutional Solutions ; Part IV: 4 Appendices ; 12 The Empty Quadrant ; 13 Medium and Form ; 14 On the History of Reality ; 15 Beyond the Modern
