Literature and Globalization: Some Thoughts on Translation and the Transnational

  • David Roberts
  • Brian Nelson

Abstract

Abstract: This article argues that it is time to re-embed the study of literature in the larger project of “world literature” – literature conceived ecumenically, and recognized as the best means of allowing the comparative study of societies and cultures in a globalized world.  World literature, as David Damrosch has argued, is a kind of writing that gains in translation, enabling texts to transcend their culture of origin.  Translation gives us a unique purchase on the global scope of the world’s cultures, past and present. 

Author Biographies

David Roberts
David Roberts is Emeritus Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Monash University.  He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and co-editor of the journal of cultural sociology and social theory, Thesis Eleven. Recent publications include: (with Johann Arnason) Canetti's Counter-Image of Society (2004); (with Peter Murphy) Dialectic of Romanticism (2004); The Total Work of Art in European Modernism (2011).
Brian Nelson
Brian Nelson is Emeritus Professor of French Studies and Translation Studies at Monash University, Melbourne.  He is the author or editor of twelve books, including, most recently, The Cambridge Companion to Zola (2007).  In addition, he has translated and edited The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames), Pot Luck (Pot-Bouille), The Kill (La Curée), The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris) and The Fortune of the Rougons (La Fortune des Rougon) for Oxford World’s Classics.  He is currently President of AALITRA.
Published
2011-05-24
Issue
Vol. 0 No. 3 (2011)
Section
Articles
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