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What's World Literature?: David Damrosch

- World literature consists of works that circulate beyond their culture of origin through translation or in their original language. David Damrosch defines world literature in this way. - Damrosch identifies three key points about world literature and translation: 1) national literatures influence each other when crossing borders like ellipses, 2) some works gain meaning in translation while others do not, and 3) world literature is a mode of reading detached from one's own time and place to engage with other cultures.

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1K views8 pages

What's World Literature?: David Damrosch

- World literature consists of works that circulate beyond their culture of origin through translation or in their original language. David Damrosch defines world literature in this way. - Damrosch identifies three key points about world literature and translation: 1) national literatures influence each other when crossing borders like ellipses, 2) some works gain meaning in translation while others do not, and 3) world literature is a mode of reading detached from one's own time and place to engage with other cultures.

Uploaded by

BasmaEid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

What’s World Literature?

David Damrosch
- World literature consists of a huge corpus of works which stem from
widely disparate societies, with very different histories, frames of
cultural reference and poetics.

- These works which had the chance to be circulated and cross boarders
from one country to another are considered “world Literature”…. Once
it crosses borders, it ceases to be national.

- Globalization made it easier for individual literary works to cross


boarders.

-Damrosch defines world literature as "all literary works that circulate


beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in original
language"
- Damrotch suggests the processes by which “a literary work” becomes
world literature, that they are
- circulation
- Translation
- reading/ production
Damrosch develops THREE points
concerning World literature and
Translation.
1. ““world literature is an elliptical
refraction of national literatures.”
- This shows how literature changes when it
crosses boarders
- the flow of information is constantly moving and
transporting ideas and concepts in different
cultures.
- here, he uses the metaphor of the ellipse to clarify
that because these ellipses are coming from every
direction, every culture, and every language, they
are bound to interact and influence one another.
2. “world literature is writing that gains
in translation.”
- He explains that several different types of literature can
either maintain or lose meaning when they become a
translated work.
- For example, treaties and informational texts are
maintained in literal translation because the language they
use is simple and concise. They neither gain nor lose when
translated.
- Meanwhile, other literary works such as poems are
difficult to translate because they are tied to their original
language that they can lose meaning in their translation
and read poorly in the other language.
And so ( a national work)
He believes that a literary work can only become world
literature when it gains in its translation and is a balanced
piece of literature. He uses The Epic of Gilgamesh as an
example of a literary work that has been opened to a
wider audience through its growth in translation.
3. “world literature is not a set canon of texts but a
mode of reading: a form of detached engagement
with worlds beyond our own place and time.”
This means that these works should not be credited too much
for being world literature, but rather a way to connect to
cultures and times other than our own.
Because of this interconnection, Damrosch believes that
translations are constantly being influenced by different
outsid forces.

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