World Literature & Translation: A Rhapsody on Two Concepts Cover Image

Световна литература & Превод: Рапсодия за две понятия
World Literature & Translation: A Rhapsody on Two Concepts

Author(s): Lyubka Lipcheva-Prandzeva
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Philology
Published by: Пловдивски университет »Паисий Хилендарски«
Keywords: World literature; translation; history of concepts; regional and global; translation transfer
Summary/Abstract: The present paper traces the reasons for the mutual (mis)recognition of two in essence intrinsically semantically inter-related concepts: World literature and translation. By chartering some stages in the cultural debates about them in the period between the 19th and the 21st century (Goethe, Auerbach, Schleiermacher, Ortega y Gasset and a number of contemporary scholars), the analysis does not aim at presenting a panorama but at elucidating the biases and prejudices that led to this “theoretical shortsightedness”: the high expectations of cosmopolitanism from the beginning of the 19th century, the sharp negativism towards mass culture, the denial of the creative essence of translation, today’s heightened demands for inter- and transcultural communication, behind which we can very often straightforwardly discern, among other things, market mechanisms.