Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective

Volume 1: Notions of Literature Across Cultures. Volume 2: Literary Genres: An Intercultural Approach. Volume 3+4: Literary Interactions in the Modern World 1+2

Anders Pettersson, Gunilla Lindberg-Wada, Margareta Petersson, Stefan Helgesson

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9783110189322
• eBook ISBN: 9783110894110
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective is a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Initiated in 1996 and launched in 1999, it aims at finding suitable methods and approaches for studying and analysing literature globally, emphasizing the comparative and intercultural aspect.
Even though we nowadays have fast and easy access to any kind of information on literature and literary history, we encounter, more than ever, the difficulty of finding a credible overall perspective on world literary history. Until today, literary cultures and traditions have usually been studied separately, each field using its own principles and methods. Even the conceptual basis itself varies from section to section and the genre concepts employed are not mutually compatible. As a consequence, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the interested layperson as well as for the professional student, to gain a clear and fair perspective both on the literary traditions of other peoples and on one's own traditions.
The project can be considered as a contribution to gradually removing this problem and helping to gain a better understanding of literature and literary history by means of a concerted empirical research and deeper conceptual reflection. The contributions to the four volumes are written in English by specialists from a large number of disciplines, primarily from the fields of comparative literature, Oriental studies and African studies in Sweden. All of the literary texts discussed in the articles are in the original language.
Each one of the four volumes is devoted to a special research topic.

Table of contents

• General Preface to the Series
• Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Concepts of Literature and Transcultural Literary History
• Becoming Literature: Views of Popular Fiction in Twentieth-Century China
• One Lucky Bastard: On the Hybrid Origins of Chinese “Literature”
• Japanese Literary History Writing: The Beginnings
• The Pleasure of Poetry—Sanskrit Poetics and kāvya
• Adab and Arabic Literature
• Let the House Be Dead Silent: A Discussion of Literariness in East African Oral Literature
• Experiences of Orature in Sahelian West Africa
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• Introduction: Genji monogatari and the Intercultural Understanding of Literary Genres
• The Autobiographical Novel/Short Story Watakushishōsetsu in Japanese Literature
• The Theory of Ancient Chinese Genres
• Drama for Learning and Pleasure: Japan, China and India in a Comparative Perspective
• Genre in Early Arabic Poetry
• ”Genres” in Persian Literature 900-1900
• Byzantine Saints’ Lives as a Literary Genre
• Conclusion: A Pragmatic Perspective on Genres and Theories of Genre
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• Introduction: Cultural Encounters between Literary Cultures. The Example of the Novel
• Inventing Traditions: A Comparative Perspective on the Writing of Literary History
• African Literature, or African Literatures? Reflections on a Terminological Problem
• The Role of Western Literature in the Formation of the Modern Japanese Novel
• Transculturating the Epic: The Arab Awakening and the Translation of the Iliad
• Euro-African Dialogue: Some Examples of African Hypertexts of European Hypotexts
• Notes on Contributors
• Index
• Something Very Light, Perhaps a Little Educative: Negotiations of Cultural Hierarchies in the Ghanaian Novel in English between Nkrumah and Armah
• Amerindian and European Narratives in Interaction
• Hybridity in Indian English Literature
• Modernism under Portuguese Rule: José Craveirinha, Luandino Vieira and the Doubleness of Colonial Modernity
• The Detective in the Service of the Emperor, the Republic, and the Communist Party
• Appropriations of European Theatre in Japan, China and India
• Globalisation and Cross-Cultural Writing in the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman
• Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Turkish Children’s Literature: Victims or Heroes?
• Going Global: An Afterword
• Notes on Contributors
• Index