Conjectures on World Literature Cover Image

Przypuszczenia na temat literatury światowej
Conjectures on World Literature

Author(s): Franco Moretti
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Summary/Abstract: This paper proposes a new method for the study of world literature. Moretti assumes that within modernity all cultural influences – not necessarily identical with political influences – are part of the struggle for symbolic hegemony. As carriers of modernity literary genres are subjected to various deformations within local cultures. To capture these deformations it is necessary to test selected formal or structural elements (tropes, themes, motifs, narrative) across several national literatures. This is not possible through close reading, but only through distant reading, that is to say through interpretations that build on the work of other literary historians. A literary form analysed in this way represents the literary system embodied in the work (a system of literary inequality), and is an abstraction of social relationships. Hence the study of world literature is an analysis of power.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 131-147
  • Page Count: 17