Comparative Literature and World Literature: Toward a Global Cultural Community through a New Cosmopolitanism

Dear Colleagues,

World literature comprises an abundant number of works with cosmopolitan sentiments, but few literary scholars have systematically studied them from a “new cosmopolitan” perspective (Fokkema 1998). Approaching world literature through the lens of cosmopolitanism would effectively break through the methodological bottleneck we encounter in comparative and world literature studies in the “post-theoretical” era (Bordwell & Carroll 1996; Eagleton 2003; Wang 2005). Doing so enables us to scrutinize ideas of cultural tolerance and cross-cultural communication that feature heavily in literary texts, reveal the cosmopolitan sentiments behind the mask of literary nationalism, and construct conceptual grounds for constructing a cultural community across the globe.     

While a cosmopolitan approach can be extended to the study of world literature as a whole, minority literatures, unsurprisingly, are the priority that deserves our immediate attention. On the one hand, cosmopolitan thoughts are firstly or more obviously embodied in the works of minority/minoritized writers from marginalized countries (Wang 2014; Sheng 2019), such as American Indian, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Pakistani, and Latino literatures outside the Anglo-America mainstream literature; on the other hand, there is white mainstream literature in Anglo-America or Europe that contains cosmopolitan ideas or tendencies. A cosmopolitan perspective is suitable to study the well-known contemporary writers, such as Vladimir Nabokov, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston, Junot Díaz, Toni Morrison, and John Maxwell Coetzee. It is also highly useful for the study of many classic authors such as Goethe, Henry James, Catherine Anne Porter, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Joseph Rudyard Kipling, among others.    

As some sharp-sighted scholars have long been aware, a cosmopolitan perspective is productive in both the fields of world literature studies and comparative literature studies. For instance, when commenting on the current condition of comparative literature in the 21st century, Daiyun Yue, a prestigious scholar of comparative literature and professor at Peking University, has repeatedly highlighted the urgency to oppose narrow nationalism, cultural isolationism, the model of cultural dichotomy, and the "centrism" of any country. She argues, “history has long proved that the mutual stimulation of different cultures is an important driving force for cultural development” (Yue, 2021). She further urges that cultural tolerance and “he er bu tong” (harmony without uniformity) can help to shape a “new humanism” that promotes mutual appreciation among different cultures (Yue, 2021). National literature, inseparable from world literature, is likewise imbued with the spirit of cosmopolitanism that undoubtedly contributes to its construction. David Damrosch in his book, What is World Literature, convincingly demonstrates the important role played by the idea of cosmopolitanism in the construction of world literature (Damrosch, 2003). These scholars’ emphasis on the concept of world literature and the values of “new humanism” and “harmony without uniformity” undoubtedly suggests a very strong literary or cultural cosmopolitanism.    

In this Special Issue that we have called “Comparative Literature and World Literature: Toward a Global Cultural Community through a New Cosmopolitanisms,” the authors will, hopefully, explore the forms and implications of cultural interactions in contemporary and classic literary texts from a cosmopolitan perspective. The issues that could be studied include, but are certainly not limited to:    

• Comparative literature and world literature from the perspective of cosmopolitanism;    
• New cosmopolitanism and its manifestations in contemporary world literatures;    
• Cultural encounters and cultural communities in contemporary world literatures;    
• Minoritized cultures and their “survivance” against the backdrop of dominant culture;    
• Cosmopolitanism and its developments/variations/modifications in classic literature;
• East meeting the West: cosmopolitanism and the Chinese "shijie datong" (great unity of the world) in comparison.

Prof. Dr. Anfeng Sheng
Guest Editor

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• comparative literature
• world literature(s)
• global cultural community
• new cosmopolitanisms
• cultural tolerance
• cultural encounters
• cultural identity

 Title: From Multiculturalism to “Harmony out of Diversity”: A Taoist Interpretation of Marilyn Chin’s Poetry

Abstract: In the research of the recent several decades, multiculturalism has become an indispensable perspective or even a synonym of ethnic American literature. But at the same time, many scholars have also realized the paradoxes and predicament multiculturalism faces and the problems the value it conveys in its cultural practices. Facing such dilemmas, the author of this paper believes that we can benefit from the Chinese Taoist philosophical concept of “harmony out of diversity” (“chong he shuo” “冲和说”）as an alternative way to solve the problems of multiculturalism. Among other things, the Taoists contends that the relationship between different cultures is dynamic and changing; they interact with each other, confront each other and achieve understanding , interpenetration, tolerance, co-existence and balance between each other, generating new forms of culture as a result. This paper argues that the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy of “harmony out of diversity” can shed some light on the understanding and interpreting of Chinese American literature from a different perspective in the fact that it is through dealing with the ever-changing relationship between different cultures that we can learn from each other that will benefit the self, others, and each other so as to bring about a kind of harmony in the study of Chinese American literature as a new form of world literature. 

Key Words: multiculturalism, “Harmony out of Diversity”, Chinese American literature, Marilyn Chin’s poetry, world literature

Title: Finding Justice in Memory: Exploring Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Cosmopolitan Ideals in His Novels

Abstract: As a 1.5 generation Vietnamese American writer, influenced by eastern and western cultures, Viet Thanh Nguyen projects cosmopolitanism from his individual experience into his novels. Characterized by memory writing, The Sympathizer and The Committed employ individual memory to counter collective memory, cultural memory to reshape political memory, and ethnic memory to rewrite colonial memory, tearing apart the monopoly of white American writers over Vietnam War narratives. Combining Martha Nussbaum’s conception of cosmopolitanism and Jan Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, this paper argues that Viet Thanh Nguyen’s search for justice in The Sympathizer and The Committed, through three different types of memory battles, is intended to pursue an ideal realm of cosmopolitanism that pluralizes personal identity, multidimensionalizes historical truth, and multiplies national peculiarity.

Keywords: Viet Thanh Nguyen; cosmopolitanism; cultural memory; justice

Title: For the Survival of the Inuit Spirit:Exploring “Sila” in Norma Dunning’s Tainna: The Unseen Ones

Abstract: English literature by Canadian Inuit authors since the post-1990s reflects a contemplation of the transformed human-nature relationship during the Western-dominated modernization process, with a particular emphasis on the concept of “Sila”. The traditional Inuit culture embodies a profound connection to nature, with “Sila” representing a mystic life force that circulates between humans and the natural world. However, the separation of indigenous people and their land due to capitalist production disrupts this vital connection, presenting significant challenges to native culture. Norma Dunning’s short story collection Tainna: The Unseen Ones (2021), a recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, suggests a survival strategy centered on rediscovering the connection to “Sila”. This approach serves as a means to heal the traumas induced by urbanization and industrialization while preserving the spirit and identity of the Inuit. Written in English, these “Sila” narratives extend beyond the Inuit community, advocating for wider societal appreciation of Inuit culture and proposing the potential formation of a communal bond among indigenous peoples confronting similar challenges.

Keywords: Canadian Inuit literature; Inuit culture; “Sila”; modernization; human-nature relationship

Title: Community and cosmopolitanism in Welch's The Heartsong of Charging Elk

Abstract: In North American Indian literature, "expeditionary" communities often appear in representing the completion of a task. James Welch, an American Blackfoot Indian writer, epitomizes this community in his novel The Heartsong of Charging Elk. Among them, the Oglala Indian hero "Charging Elk" and his tribe form a war community to fight against the reservation system of the white government;  The "Buffalo Bill" troupe expedition to France can be regarded as the expedition community; Accidental events lead to the departure of the troupe and the protagonist’s illegal stay in France, where he overcomes racial discrimination and cultural barriers, survives, and has a family and children, forming a “garrison” community, symbolizing the success of the Indians. The union of "Charging Elk" with the French wife and the child to be born reflect the cosmopolitanism of "harmony with difference".

Key words: Community, cosmopolitanism, expedition, war, garrison

Title: Literary Utopianism: Zheng Zhenduo’s Gospel of World Literature Revisited

Abstract: This paper aims to enrich the conceptual genealogy of world literature by presenting the literary utopianism of Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎who pioneered in advocating world literature during China’s May Fourth era. Existing scholarship has overlooked one central aspect of Zheng’s discourse, namely utopia. I argue that the phenomenal rise of world literature in China championed by Zheng needs to be understood in relation to Modern Chinese utopianisn, the single most influential worldview of 20^th century China. This paper proposes the framework of literary utopianism to analyze Zheng’s preaching of world literature as worlding project globally informed and inter-disciplinarily supported. It will first offer a general introduction of May Fourth utopianism on a global stage, featured by its belief in world evolution driven by human spirit, morality, and mutual aid. Secondly, it presents Zheng’s utopian impulse in promoting world literature as “The Human Literature”人类化的文学, “the spiritual alliance of human kind of the world”全世界人类精神的连锁, and more, the revolutionary engine for the “Movement of Light”光明运动, pointing to social transformation on a global scale. Zheng’s utopianism was mostly evidenced by his manipulative translation of The Outline of Literature (Wenxue Dagang 文学大纲) originally edited by John Drinkwater. Finally, it breaks downs the organizing logic of Zheng’s worlding via literature. On the foundational view of literature as autonomous and expressive, Zheng incorporated the May Forth revolutionary philosophy of affect, Franklin Giddings’s organic social theory, and Theodor Lipps’s theory of human empathy, to promise a new world to be created through the power of literature.

keywords: world literature, Zheng Zhenduo, utopia, literary utopianism, The Outline of Literature

Title: Literary Memories and Rooted Cosmopolitanism in Xiaolu Guo’s Once Upon a Time in the East (2017)

Abstract: Xiaolu Guo, a Chinese-born writer, novelist, and filmmaker, now resident in the UK, is known for her effective use of bilingualism, trans-ethnic themes, and counter-stereotyping strategies in her works to depict the sensibilities of transnationalism and transculturality as reflected in world literature in our globalized world. Drawing on recent conceptualizations of “new cosmopolitanism”, specific to the historical conditions of late twentieth-century/early twenty-first-century globalisation, this essay reads Guo’s recent memoir Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up (2017) as an exemplar demonstrating some new tendencies and stakes of autobiographical writing as world literature in articulating the multi-layered tensions and hopes of cosmopolitanism in the new millennium. It investigates how Guo utilizes intertextuality in general and interdiscursivity particularly to negotiate her solid rootedness in the complex Chinese literary and cultural memory on the one hand, and her cosmopolitan openness to Anglophone literary traditions on the other hand, to construct her creative agency, self-determination, and postcolonial subjectivity as a cosmopolitan nomadic writer making the most of world literature’s shared memory. As I argue, essentially a coming-of-age narrative, Once Upon a Time in the East decisively departs from the narratives of ethnic pilgrim progress, which often feature motifs of victimhood, misery, and self-Orientalizing, clichés of contemporary and mainstream Chinese diasporic literature, demonstrating the complexity and multiplicity of Anglophone Chinese literature as part of world literature as much as the usefulness of the perspective of “new cosmopolitanism”. I point out that Guo’s memoir demands that in debates on autobiographical writing as world literature, we need to replace the evaluative criteria of ethnic literature based on conventional assumptions with these grounded upon a cosmopolitanism perspective so that works of multilingual and transcultural like Guo can be better studied and appreciated to articulate a vision of global community in the cultural sense.

Title: Encountering Strangers: Haitian Immigrants and Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty

Abstract: In this paper, I examine Zadie Smith’s representation of the Haitian immigrants in her novel On Beauty (2005) and interrogate the feasibility of vernacular cosmopolitanism in the context of global cohabitation. Vernacular cosmopolitanism, a notion coined by Homi Bhabha, refers to a critical and oppositional vision of cosmopolitanism that centres around the experience of dispossessed and underprivileged people and which thrives at the margin of society. Although On Beauty, set in Wellington College town, is imbued with elements of a campus novel, Zadie Smith widens the scope by connecting the College’s ivory tower of discontent with the wider real world. The expanded thematic concern is mainly illustrated through the Haitian immigrants’ cross-border interactions with the privileged people outside the campus. I contend that On Beauty captures the complexity of cross-cultural and cross-national encounters in the post-11 September United States, and it foregrounds both the challenges and possibilities of vernacular cosmopolitanism envisioned by Homi Bhabha. The expected frequent cross-border encounters and interactions do not necessarily give rise to cosmopolitan consciousness. In particular, the Haitians’ continued suffering from racial discrimination and economic exploitation in the glocal space makes it difficult for them to establish cross-boundary connections, and their oscillation between nationalist sentiment and global consciousness brings concrete historical and economic disparities to light.

Title: On Chinese Science Fiction and Its Construction of a Global Community

Abstract: Chinese science fiction emerged within the context of modernization, its global development, and dissemination. It represents the scientific imagination entwined with political aspirations for national strength and prosperity in China since the late Qing Dynasty, when Western modernization entered the country. This scientific imagination, advocating for a strong nation and prosperous people, has consistently been a central theme in Chinese science fiction throughout the past century. Hence, it can be said that Chinese science fiction has been intertwined with the global political and economic community since its inception, with science and progress as its central themes.

Title: Science Fiction as World Literature:A Cosmopolitan View of the Rise of Chinese She-SF

Abstract: Despite his aspiration to transcend the nation-state paradigm by reconceptualizing world literature as a conceptual construct that calls for a new critical method to organize the enormity of data that constitutes world literature, Moretti continues to set his study of world literature in a Procrustean bed of European design, while giving short shrift to the artistic energy of the periphery that has begun to impact and transform the center in various ways. Taking the rise of Chinese She-SF as the object of study, this essay seeks to construct a sort of alternative cosmopolitanism with concrete Chinese characteristics in order to transcend the old-fashioned West-centric and male-dominated versions of science fiction as world literature. There are three major issues that science fiction as world literature should address: first, the impact of foreign She-SF on the local writings; second, the innovation of She-SF in the Chinese context; third, the revolutionary power of Chinese She-SF for the construction and reconstruction of the world literary system. Drawing upon Moretti’s conception of distant reading, this essay primarily copes with the following questions: Who are those people writing She-SF in China? How has Chinese She-SF evolved, regarding themes, characterization, perspectives, and plots? To what extent has Chinese She-SF disturbed the male-dominated system of SF production, publication, recognition, and consecration in China? How should we assess the relative significance of Chinese She-SF in the local context? How should we evaluate the universal significance of Chinese She-SF within the broader context of world literature? Finally, how does this investigation of Chinese She-SF provoke new reflections on world literature?

Keywords: Chinese She-SF; world literature; cosmopolitan; distant reading

Title: “The Triumph of the Ordinary”: Mental Reservation, Race Mediation and Construction of a Human Social Community in Sherman Alexie’s Ten Little Indians

Abstract: In Ten Little Indians, Sherman Alexie tells nine stories of Spokane urban Indians’ life experience in the city of Seattle, dealing with their problematic realities of being loveless and “homeless” which is shared by other minority groups as well as white folks. Instead of focusing merely on the discussion of Indian identity, Alexie shows much concerns about the common fate of humanity by underlying the fact that we are all trapped by other people’s ideas. Addressing characters of differences in ethnicity, nation, class, gender and culture in the stories as ordinary people, this paper takes race as a functional medium for seeing through how a cluster of stereotypes come into being from the dimensions of the spatial medium of race and the temporal mediation of race, and details what Alexie’s considerable hope for “the triumph of the ordinary” looks like in the human social community.

Keywords: Ten Little Indians; Sherman Alexie; race as a medium; stereotype; “the triumph of the ordinary”; human social community

Title: The Expatriate Literary Community of Early Twentieth-Century American Women Writers in Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company and the Collected Letters

Abstract: Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company has always been seen as a narrative of life through the lens of her eponymous bookstore and the geographical existence of the street on which it is located. Beach described in detail and with tenderness her own life and career in the early twentieth century, as well as the people she met, including many of the familiar “Lost Generations”: Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and many others. Previous studies have tended to treat Beach’s perspectives, feelings, depictions, and expressions as historical information that complements the biographies of these well-known writers, while ignoring their own literary and cultural value.

    In fact, Beach, as an American woman living abroad in Paris, was an important part of the loose but inclusive diasporic community of women’s literature at the Left Bank at the time. She was a regular visitor to the two salons dominated by Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney, and became a bridge between them because of her adorable personalities and characters. Therefore, Beach’s references to Stein, Barney, the daily records of the two salons, and the relationships and differences between the salons are very important; yet this is something that has often been overlooked in previous studies, as researchers have only focused on Beach’s encounters with Hemingway, Joyce, Fitzgerald. Also, Beach’s bookstore, along with that of her partner Adrienne Monnier, created a cultural enclave for the expatriate literary community, a place to reflect on American modernism and the English language, even in Paris.

    Beach’s narrative as a connection between Stein and Barney’s salon, Beach and Monnier’s bookstore as a cultural enclave for modernists, and the ways in which Beach as an expatriate American woman in Paris presented and represented the look and thought of the expatriate women’s literary community (Some of the women writers or artists from the female expatriate salon literature circle that Beach knew or mentioned are Natalie Barney, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Janet Flanner, Bryher, Mina Loy, and others.) of the era will be used to analyze the early twentieth-century amidst Beach’s life narrative Shakespeare and Company and the collection of letters to the women’s literary community.

Keywords: Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, expatriate, women writers, American