ABSTRACT
Earlier I cited Werner Friederich ironically referring to what in the late 1950s passed for “world literature” as NATO literature, and that this was already an overstatement as usually only about one fourth of the literatures in the then fifteen NATO languages received any actual sustained attention. The literatures in question were French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian, and discussion on world literature was almost exclusively restricted to German, French, and US comparative literature circles. This is not to say that there was no work being undertaken on world literature elsewhere, particularly in Europe, but this usually shadowed what was being done, primarily, in the major European French and German academic centers, filtered only rarely into the more general or “global” discussion, and the latter usually only when done straightaway in a “major” European language or translated therein. This situation has basically persisted to this day, with US academe, and the English language, increasingly supplanting German and French preponderance. Work on world literature done outside of Europe and the US usually has only been recognized as such retrospectively and as a result of the renewed interest in world literature in Europe, and particularly in the USA, as at the end of the twentieth century. In what follows I will concentrate, in particular, on examples from Europe’s so-called “semi-periphery” and on China to gauge the impact of the renewal of interest in world literature beyond the core area of “comparative Literature talking about world literature.” In most cases this will involve both a return to “native” precursors to claim an “alter-native” approach to world literature and an unspoken but I think nonetheless implied resistance to a world literature fashioned by Anglophone hegemony.
