Transformative Fictions

World Literature and Personal Change
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-032-26715-9
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 236 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 501 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature

Transformative Fictions: World Literature and Personal Change engages with current debates in world literature over the past twenty years, addressing the nature of literary influence in centers and peripheries, the formation of transnational literary and pedagogical canons, and the role of translation and regionalism in how we relate to texts from around the globe.

The author, Daniel Just, argues for a supranational but sub-global perspective of regions that emphasizes practical reasons for reading and focuses on the potential of literary texts to stimulate personal transformation in readers. One of the recurring dilemmas in these debates is the issue of delimitation of world literature. The trouble with the world as a frame of reference is that no single researcher is bound to have the in-depth knowledge and linguistic skills to discuss works from all countries. In response, this book revives literary theory and recasts it for the purposes of world literature, by making a case for the continuing relevance of literature in the age of new media. With the examples of fictional and nonfictional writings by Milan Kundera, Witold Gombrowicz and Bohumil Hrabal, Just shows that regional literatures offer differing methods of activating readers and thereby prompting personal change.

This book would be of general interest to anyone who wants to explore personal change through literature but is particularly indispensable for literary professionals, researchers, and postgraduate and graduate students.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Just, Daniel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften Semiotik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments

- Note on Translations

- Introduction: The World, the Region, and the Uses of Literature

- Milan Kundera and the Transformative Poetics of the Novel

- Speculative Explorations: Milan Kundera’s Essays

- Disruption and Agitation in Novels by Witold Gombrowicz

- Witold Gombrowicz’s Autobiographical Provocations

- Bohumil Hrabal, Literary Narrative, and Adaptive Change

- Strategic Self-Stylizations: Bohumil Hrabal’s Autofictions and Essays

- Conclusion: World Literature, Literacy, and New Geographies

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Daniel Just is Associate Professor at Bilkent University. He is the author of Literature, Ethics, and Decolonization in Postwar France: The Politics of Disengagement (Cambridge, 2015) and articles in journals including New Literary History, Poetics Today, MLN, Comparative Literature, Modern Language Review, and Philosophy and Literature.