Arguments for a Cross-Cultural Literary History. Theoretical and Practical Implications
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Marcel Cornis-Pope
Abstract
The remarks below draw on my experience of working with John Neubauer on a massive History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Century. This four-volume work, sponsored by ICLA and slated to be published by John Benjamins, has occupied much of our thinking and writing for the past six years. And were it not for John Neubauer's proverbial patience and unflagging energy, we would have long ago abandoned this project that has regularly overwhelmed us with a plethora of conceptual and editorial problems. It is not difficult to imagine why a work that proposes to cover two eventful centuries in the evolution of a score of literatures from several different language areas, and which has required over 100 contributors to map some of the exchanges between them, has often given pause to its coeditors. Both of us have from the start been aware not only of the enormity of this undertaking, but also of the controversial nature of its conception, challenging traditional literary histories based on national(istic) and text-oriented premises. Moving beyond the conventional boundaries of national literatures, historical trends, and generic divisions, seeking instead those “junctures” or “nodes” that allow for a cross-cultural reinterpretation, this history could easily upset both national sensitivities and narrow aesthetic or text-oriented concerns.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Portrait of an Interdisciplinary Life. John Neubauer zum 70. Geburtstag
- Introduction
- Thought-Images: A Brief History of Time
- The Return of the Dinosaurs: About Scientific Imagination and its Affects
- Borders and Monuments: Goethe's Reconstruction of the World as Knowledge
- History, Theory and Abraham Gottlob Werner
- Mynheer Peeperkorn's Fever
- Introduction
- History, Empire, Opera
- Music Albums: A Tiny Gesamtkunstwerk?
- Listening to Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate. A Dadaistic-Romantic transposition d'arts?
- Introduction
- Reading Melling's Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople. Topography and Control
- Penumbra
- Bruno Freddi's Vissuto
- From Stony Facts to Paper Flowers
- Picturing It. The Issue of Visuality in the Classical Theory of Metaphor
- Introduction
- The Practical Use of Historiography: from Haffner to Herodotus
- The Gap between Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka
- Literature and Art in History
- Cultural Memory, Cultural History and Cultural Canons in the Third Millennium
- Cross-border Histories
- Introduction
- The Intolerable
- History, Theory and the Middle Voice
- Sacred Memory or Relics: Should Holocaust Documents Be Altered?
- Blasting the Historical Continuum: Stories of my Grandmother
- Der Erlkönig in Sarajevo: Did the monument forecast the catastrophe?
- Introduction
- Hans Mayer – Ansichten eines komparatistischen Außenseiters
- Mastering Adolescence in the Age of Cultural Studies
- Bamboozled by Literature
- Arguments for a Cross-Cultural Literary History. Theoretical and Practical Implications
- Comparative Literary History, Theory and Practice: John Neubauer's Contribution
- “Rich Seeds We Must Sow … But If Only a Few Will Take”
- John Neubauer's Cultural Geographies
- The Marathon Man
- Embracing the Horizon
- Rezensionen
Articles in the same Issue
- Portrait of an Interdisciplinary Life. John Neubauer zum 70. Geburtstag
- Introduction
- Thought-Images: A Brief History of Time
- The Return of the Dinosaurs: About Scientific Imagination and its Affects
- Borders and Monuments: Goethe's Reconstruction of the World as Knowledge
- History, Theory and Abraham Gottlob Werner
- Mynheer Peeperkorn's Fever
- Introduction
- History, Empire, Opera
- Music Albums: A Tiny Gesamtkunstwerk?
- Listening to Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate. A Dadaistic-Romantic transposition d'arts?
- Introduction
- Reading Melling's Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople. Topography and Control
- Penumbra
- Bruno Freddi's Vissuto
- From Stony Facts to Paper Flowers
- Picturing It. The Issue of Visuality in the Classical Theory of Metaphor
- Introduction
- The Practical Use of Historiography: from Haffner to Herodotus
- The Gap between Hannah Arendt and Franz Kafka
- Literature and Art in History
- Cultural Memory, Cultural History and Cultural Canons in the Third Millennium
- Cross-border Histories
- Introduction
- The Intolerable
- History, Theory and the Middle Voice
- Sacred Memory or Relics: Should Holocaust Documents Be Altered?
- Blasting the Historical Continuum: Stories of my Grandmother
- Der Erlkönig in Sarajevo: Did the monument forecast the catastrophe?
- Introduction
- Hans Mayer – Ansichten eines komparatistischen Außenseiters
- Mastering Adolescence in the Age of Cultural Studies
- Bamboozled by Literature
- Arguments for a Cross-Cultural Literary History. Theoretical and Practical Implications
- Comparative Literary History, Theory and Practice: John Neubauer's Contribution
- “Rich Seeds We Must Sow … But If Only a Few Will Take”
- John Neubauer's Cultural Geographies
- The Marathon Man
- Embracing the Horizon
- Rezensionen
