THE CONCEPT OF WORLD LITERATURE IN CZECH AND SLOVAK COMPARATIVE LITERARY STUDIES

• Authors: Zelenka Miloš
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article aims to systemize the trends in world literature research, highlighting the differences between the concepts of this phenomenon as embraced by “small” and “large” literatures. It also takes account of the Czech and Slovak line of thinking which questions the concept of world literature as normative poetics or the standardized canon of masterpieces and their various discourses. The historical experience of Czech and Slovak comparative literary studies defending the independent values of Slavic literatures suggests that there cannot be any arbitrary research on world literature. With some exceptions and regardless of their terminologically and semantically different interpretations of this specialism, contemporary theoretical concepts (as embraced by Emily Apter, Pascale Casanova, David Damrosch, Marko Juvan, Franco Moretti, etc.) re-establish recognizing world literature as an international research issue or a subject employing English as a universal means of communication. Imposing such notion would allegedly condone inequality as a kind of epistemological framework to codify the binary opposition of “developed” and “underdeveloped” or “the centre” and “periphery”. It was mainly the Czech-Slovak structuralise tradition (represented by Frank Wollman, René Wellek, Dionýz Ďurišin, etc.) that rejected national literature as a natural starting point of world literature. Anchored in the Central European intellectual milieu at the crossing of various aesthetic movements, these “defensive” theories were linked with the structural concept of the Prague Linguistic Circle, letting alone the multilingual tradition of the former Habsburg Empire and the phenomenon of migration which implied the aspect of polyglossia and heterotopia as a breeding ground for comparative scholars.

Keywords

EN

WORLD LITERATURE; COMPARATIVE LITERATURE; CZECH; SLOVAK

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 5 - 30

Contributors

author

Zelenka Miloš

• Institute of Central European Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Central European Studies Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Dražovská 4, 949 74 Nitra, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4049-3263

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2022.14.2.1