Do the notions of “World Lingua Franca” and “World Literature” now need to be firmly relegated to an imperialist-cum-colonialist past? Or can they be rehabilitated in a practical and equitable way that fully endorses a politics of recognition? For scholars in the field of languages and literatures, this is the central dilemma to be faced in a world that is increasingly globalized. In this book, the possible banes and benefits of globalization are illuminated from many different viewpoints by scholars based in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania. Among their more particular topics of discussion are: language spread, language hegemony, and language conservation; literary canons, literature and identity, and literary anthologies; and the bearing of the new communication technologies on languages and literatures alike. Throughout the book, however, the most frequently explored opposition is between languages or literatures perceived as “major” and others perceived as “minor”, two terms which are sometimes qualitative in connotation, sometimes quantitative, and sometimes both at once, depending on who is using them and with reference to what.

The contribution that scholarly organizations make to the study of languages and literatures is a service to the value of systematically learning and using meaning—understanding that meaning operates in systems. Constructively speaking, these organizations support the teaching and research of our world’s experts in grammar, genre, medium, production, reception, exchange, critique, appreciation, and so on. More defensively, they are bulwarks against systems of misinformation, against the empowerment of misrepresentation and distrust between people. The chapters in this volume range from the Old Testament to Facebook and from East Asia to West Africa via Australia, the Americas, and Europe. The scholarly strength forged across that range speaks to similar strengths that so many scholarly organizations devoted to studies in languages and literatures have cultivated and maintained—often in the face of government indifference or hostility towards the Humanities. Beyond Babel makes a powerful case for their potential.

The importance of a minor language in the field of world literature Dutch literature is increasingly understood as a network of texts and poetics connected to other languages and literatures through translations and adaptations. In this book, a team of international researchers explores how Dutch literary texts cross linguistic, historical, geophysical, political, religious, and disciplinary borders, and reflects on a wide range of methods for studying these myriad border crossings. As a result, this volume provides insight into the international dissemination of Dutch literature and the position of a smaller, less-translated language within the field of world literature. The title Doing Double Dutch evokes a popular rope-skipping game in which two people turn two long jump ropes in opposite directions while a third person jumps them. A fitting metaphor for how literature circulates internationally: two dynamic spheres, the source culture and the target culture, engage one another in a complex pattern of movement resulting in a new literary work, translation, or adaptation formed somewhere in the middle. Contributors: Chiara Beltrami Gottmer (American International School of Rotterdam), Peter Boot (Huygens ING), Pieter Boulogne (KU Leuven), Elke Brems (KU Leuven), Michel De Dobbeleer (University of Ghent), Caroline de Westenholz (Louis Couperus Museum), Gillis Dorleijn (University of Groningen), Wilken Engelbrecht (Palacký University Olomouc), Veerle Fraeters (University of Antwerp), Maud Gonne (KU Leuven), Christine Hermann (University of Vienna), Peter Kegel (Huygens ING), Tessa Lobbes (Utrecht University), Marijke Meijer Drees (University of Groningen), Reine Meylaerts (KU Leuven), Marco Prandoni (University of Bologna), Marion Prinse (Utrecht University), Orsolya Réthelyi (Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, Huygens ING), Diana Sanz Roig (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Rita Schlusemann (Utrecht University), Matthieu Sergier (Université Saint Louis Brussels), Natalia Stachura (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan), Janek Urbaniak (University of Wrocław), Stéphanie Vanasten (UCL Louvain-la-Neuve), Ton van Kalmthout (Huygens ING), Suzanne van Putten-Brons, Herbert Van Uffelen (University of Vienna), Marc van Zoggel (Huygens ING), Nico Wilterdink (University of Amsterdam).

Translation is a rapidly developing subject of study, especially in China, Australia, Europe and the USA. This Handbook offers an accessible and authoritative account of the many facets of this buoyant discipline, intended for students, teachers and scholars of translation studies, modern languages, linguistics, social studies and literary studies.

As traced by Roger D. Sell, literary communication is a process of community-making. As long as literary authors and those responding to them respect each other’s human autonomy, literature flourishes as an enjoyable, though often challenging mode of interaction that is truly dialogical in spirit. This gives rise to author-respondent communities whose members represent existential commonalities blended together with historical differences. These heterogeneous literary communities have a larger social significance, in that they have long served as counterweights to the hegemonic tendencies of modernity, and more recently to postmodernity’s well-intentioned but restrictive politics of identity. In post-postmodern times, their ethos is increasingly one of pleasurable egalitarianism. The despondent anti-hedonism of the twentieth century intelligentsia can now seem rather dated. Some of the papers selected for this volume develop Sell’s ideas in mainly theoretical terms. But most of them offer detailed criticism of particular anglophone writers, ranging from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other poets and dramatists of the early modern period, through Wordsworth and Coleridge, to Dickens, Pinter, and Rushdie.

The recent return of 'world literature' to the centre of literary studies has entailed an increased attention to non-European literatures, but in turn has also further marginalized Europe's smaller literatures. Dutch and Flemish Literature as World Literature shows how Dutch-language literature, from its very beginnings in the Middle Ages to the present, has not only always taken its cue from the 'major' literary traditions of Europe and beyond, but has also actively contributed to and influenced these traditions. The contributors to this book focus on key works and authors, providing a concise, yet highly readable, history of Dutch-language literature and demonstrating how this literature is anchored in world literature.

This Companion presents lucid and exemplary critical essays, introducing readers to the major ideas and practices of world literary studies.

The languages indigenous to North America are characterized by a remarkable genetic and typological diversity. Based on the premise that linguistic examples play a key role in the origin and transmission of ideas within linguistics and across disciplines, this book examines the history of approaches to these languages through the lens of some of their most prominent properties. These properties include consonant inventories and the near absence of labials in Iroquoian languages, gender in Algonquian languages, verbs for washing in the Iroquoian language Cherokee and terms for snow and related phenomena in Eskimo-Aleut languages. By tracing the interpretations of the four examples by European and American scholars, the author illustrates their role in both lay and professional contexts as a window onto unfamiliar languages and cultures, thus allowing a more holistic view of the history of language study in North America.

Examining the cultural dynamics of translation and transfer, Cultural Transfer Reconsideredproposes new insights into both epistemological and analytical questions. With its focus on the North, the book opens perspectives mainly implying textual, intertextual and artistic practices and postcolonial interrelatedness.

This book comprises a selection of papers delivered at a research meeting of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS) which took place in Paris in March, 2009. As suggested by its title, it addresses prejudices prevailing not only in Western societies, but also in marginalized ones, especially among their Western-oriented intelligentsia. It is often claimed that there exists no ‘serious’ contribution to world culture that is not based on the Western models that prevail worldwide, especially in the aftermath of globalization. This book challenges the projected image of a dominant West serving as a necessary and indispensable model for a dependent, receptive ‘rest of the world.’ It can be read as a necessary decolonization of today’s human knowledge in all disciplines by taking as an example recent Arab contributions in many areas of human knowledge, from the natural sciences to the political economy or architecture. Other marginalized socio-cultures worldwide, like those of Africa, India, Thailand, Persia, and Ireland, should follow suit in presenting an alternative to the extant globalization of Western norms, by offering a truly equal open exchange of human inventions on a world scale.