Literature and the Making of the World: Cosmopolitan Texts, Vernacular Practices (Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures)

"Positioning itself at the intersection of world literature studies, literary anthropology, and philosophical critiques of "world" and "globe" concepts, this volume investigates how literature imagines and shapes worlds for its readers through linguistically specific cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamics, both at the level of textual engagement and on a material level of textual production and circulation. Moving from textual analyses in Part One-"Worlds in Texts"-to combined analyses of texts, media, and agents in the literary field in Part Two-"Texts in Worlds"-the concerns of these 9 chapters range from multilingualism, genre, and style, to material forms such as the little magazine or the scrapbook archive, and finally to activities such as travel (as a writing profession) and literary promotion. With this focus on practice-which geographically engages with Constantinople, China, Russia, western Europe, North America, southern Africa, and India-the volume's contributors demonstrate methodologically how world literature studies can bring the empirically specific detail to bear on global modes of analysis. It is precisely through such a dual optic that the world-making capacity of literature becomes apparent"-- Provided by publisher Cover Contents List of figures Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Series introduction – The cosmopolitan–vernacular dynamic: Conjunctions of world literature Stefan Helgesson, Christina Kullberg, Paul Tenngart and Helena Wulff Introduction – Literature and the making of the world Stefan Helgesson Part 1 Worlds in texts: Languages and narratives 1 Narrating the crisis of Constantinople 1908–1922: A lost world in Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Russian Helena Bodin 2 The worlds of multiglossia in modern Chinese fiction: Lu Xun’s ‘A Madman’s Diary’ and the ‘Shaky House’ Lena Rydholm 3 Writing vulnerable worlds: Siberian exile and the anthropology of world-making Mattias Viktorin 4 The making of Paris in novels by Balzac and Flaubert Annika Mörte Alling 5 Joseph Brodsky’s returns to Venice in Watermark: Old-world cosmopolitanism revisited Anna Ljunggren Part 2 Texts in worlds: Production and material practices 6 A homemade history: Documenting the Harlem Renaissance in Alexander Gumby’s scrapbooks Irina D. Rasmussen 7 The little magazine as a world-making form: Literary distance and political contestation in southern African journals Stefan Helgesson 8 Worlds in a tangle: The promotion of writing in India between the vernacular and the global Per Ståhlberg 9 Loss of words and end of worlds: Transitions and troubles of travel writing †Anette Nyqvist Afterword World literature in the making Helena Bodin, Stefan Helgesson, Anna Ljunggren, Annika Mörte Alling, †Anette Nyqvist, Irina D. Rasmussen, Lena Rydholm,Per Ståhlberg and Mattias Viktorin Index This open access book positions itself at the intersection of world literature studies, literary anthropology and philosophical critiques of 'world' and 'globe' concepts. Doing so, it investigates how literature imagines and shapes worlds for its readers through linguistically specific cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamics, both at the level of textual engagement and on a material level of textual production and circulation. Moving from textual analyses in Part One - 'Worlds in Texts' - to combined analyses of texts, media and agents in the literary field in Part Two - 'Texts in Worlds' - the concerns of these nine chapters range from multilingualism, genre and style to material forms such as the little magazine or the scrapbook archive and finally to activities such as travel (as a writing profession) and literary promotion. With this focus on practice - which geographically engages with Constantinople, China, Russia, western Europe, North America, southern Africa and India - contributors demonstrate methodologically how world literature studies can bring the empirically specific detail to bear on global modes of analysis. It is precisely through such a dual optic that the world-making capacity of literature becomes apparent