ABSTRACT
This chapter asks why Shakespeare figures so little in contemporary debates on world literature, despite being the preeminent instance of a writer whose works have travelled all over the world through translation and adaptation. Arguing that ‘global Shakespeare’ and the idea of a ‘world literature’ are, in some ways, contrasted concepts, and that Shakespeare’s global appropriation may even undermine or challenge the category of world literature, it discusses to what extent we can read him as travelling text, as a form of cultural capital circulated in global networks, and as a subversive counter-example to standard accounts of world literature.
