Rethinking World Literature Studies in Latin American and Spanish Contexts

Abstract

This issue presents a collection of essays which address, from the perspectives of distinct critical traditions, the epistemological framework and central problems of World Literature Studies both its most original contributions (de-Eurocentering Weltliteratur, addressing various levels of culture, centering the circulation of texts and their translation, the role of the market), as well as its dialogue with classic comparative approaches. The term "rethinking" used in the title of the issue is not meant in the sense of adding fuel to the debate lively enough as it is around the very notion of World Literature (Damrosch, Moretti, Casanova, and David, among others), but denotes an operation that is essential to any critical endeavor: the interrogation of theories and methods that underlie the reading of a text (as Raymond Williams and Edward Said have argued). We assume World Literature as a mode of comparativism that integrates the classical concerns of Comparative Literature about supranational relationships between texts, with the "secular" criticism of Cultural Studies and its attention to context.