Calling all English professors! Calling all professors of Comparative Literature! I have various graduate students who want to study “world literature” but only read English. They want to cover many texts from many centuries, continents and countries. What is “world literature” and how does it differ from Comparative Literature? How much should we expect someone who has studied, say, Rabelais as a piece of “world literature,” to actually know about Rabelais? Can we expect them to know as much as a student in French or Comparative Literature would be expected to know? If not, how is Rabelais not just someone one has read? How does he become an author one has studied at the doctoral level?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Aha! This is something I’m (sort of) working on right now. Put it another way: is the “world” in “world literature” the same as the “world” in “world music”?
(Yes, I know about Goethe and Weltlitteratur, but I wonder if that’s what your students mean…)
So you’re working on it for administrative or research reasons???
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Speaking of Goethe, there was a Kundera article in the New Yorker a few months back which was rather useful in its casual, New Yorkerish way. The abstract doesn’t do it justice, but here it is.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/08/070108fa_fact_kundera
Here’s John Pizer on it:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ydMy5TjohIAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=pizer+world+literature
I didn’t realize he had worked on this, I should read the chapter and go talk to him. It looks really germane and he distinguishes Weltlitteratur and “World Literature” as taught in the U.S.
Then there’s Damrosch’s book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=yY-17mtp9R8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=damrosch+what+is+world+literature
and I hadn’t thought of needing these books or Weltlitterature to help me with my current mini article on Walter Benjamin, but HMMMMM.
The Pizer book looks truly interesting, at least from glancing through. And now I see that there are many articles discussing this. OH GOD I AM TEMPTED TO START READING, STOP ME.
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Same as world music, in the sense that world music sounds vaguely ethnic and otherwise similar – ‘hippie muzak’ is what one friend says – that is probably what they want. A colleague calls it shopping, as in for jeans when you already know in a general way what styles you like. You search worldwide for books that fit your style. The students do *not* want to study any historical context, just read discrete books and comment on their style.
They also appear to want everything to be related to the mainstream. Richard Wright connected to Henry James, good, connected to other African-
American writers, bad.
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Hmmm… also Simon Fraser U seems to have a program in World Lit. I’d compare that to the UCSD literature program to programs in Comp Lit … ah procrastination (except that I’m glad it led me to find out the contents of Pizer’s book).
If they want to be well-read, by all means, they should read works in translation from other traditions. However, if they want to put such a work on an English department graduate reading list or an exam, they should be held to the same scholarly standards to which they are held on items in English from various parts of the world (already somewhat dubious in many cases). That would minimally require that they understand something about the context and history of reception of that work through a thorough reading of secondary sources (histories, criticism, etc). In addition, I would expect them to justify inclusion of such items (Rabelais, Cervantes, whatever) as being related in some way (genre, thematic, whatever) to the rest of their program. Otherwise, they are pretending that their cultural tourism is scholarship and are acting like colonialists.
Joanna – exactamente. Pero esa es la actitud de nuestro departamento de origen y la gente vive diciendome que mis estandares son del otro mundo y que ademas yo misma no los alcanzo. (“Que me las pelen” diria C.V.)