Shivani Arulalan Pillai (Oxford) and Mary Orsak (Oxford)
Almost two hundred years after Goethe fantasized about an imminent future in which Weltliteratur, or world literature, would triumph over national literary canons, the term “world literature” remains contentious. In this session of the OCCT Discussion Group, we will discuss the concept of “world literature” and its relevance in contemporary literary studies. For this discussion, we invite participants to select a chapter(s) from Bloomsbury’s series, Literatures as World Literatures. In this discussion, we will not only ask, “What is World Literature?” but also, as Haun Saussy (2017) wonders, “Whence comes this fantasy, and what is the hold it still has on us?’
