Reviews for The World Republic of Letters

The average rating for The World Republic of Letters based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-18 00:00:00 Paul Viapiana [On Joyce: The question of literary autonomy in Ireland was played out through a subversive use of language and of the national and social codes connected with it. Joyce condensed and, in his own fashion, settled the debate - inseparably literary, linguistic, and political - that pitted the proponents of Gaelic against those of English. Joyce's dual opposition was spatial as well as literary: refusing to obey either the law of London or that of Dublin, he chose exile on the continent in order to produce an Irish literature. Ultimately it was in Paris, a politically neutral ground and an international literary capital, that he was to try to achieve this apparently contradictory result - thus placing himself in a position that was eccentric in the fullest sense of the word. Joyce settled in Paris, not in order to draw upon any models he might have found there, but to subvert the language of oppression itself. His purpose was therefore both literary and political. The history of Irish literature was not finished with James Joyce. Through his claim to literary extraterritoriality he not only gave Irish literary space its contemporary form; he opened up a connection to Paris, thus providing a solution for all those who rejected the colonial alternative of retreat to Dublin or treasonous emigration to London... Yeats staked out the first national literary position in Dublin; in London, Shaw occupied the canonical position of the Irishman adapted to suit English requirements; Joyce, refusing to choose between these cities, succeeded in reconciling contraries by establishing Paris as a new stronghold for the Irish, ruling out both conformity to the standards of national poetry and submission to English literary norms. On Faulkner: Though he enjoys a great reputation in the highest circles of the literary world and ranks among the great literary revolutionaries, Faulkner is also a figure with whom all writers in countries on the periphery can identify - still more than Joyce, who has been annexed by critics in the centers and so thoroughly dehistoricized that deprived writers, bowing to the monopoly power of the capitals over literary consecration, tend to overlook the subversive dimension of his work. In putting an end to the curse of backwardness that lay over these regions, by offering the novelists of the poorest countries the possibility of giving acceptable literary form to the most repugnant realities of the margins of the world, Faulkner has been a formidable force for accelerating literary time. On what prizes like The Booker Prize do: But London has seldom imposed itself outside the linguistic jurisdiction of the British Empire (now Commonwealth). London publishers today publish very few literary translations, and prizes are awarded only to works written in English. It owes its credit to the vast extent of its linguistic area and to the globally dominant position now enjoyed by the English language; but because its power of consecration has always had a linguistic (and therefore often political) basis, its strictly literary credit is not of the same kind as that commanded by Paris. In recent years the rivalry between London and New York has produced a very clear bipolarization of English-speaking cultural space. But if New York today is the unchallenged publishing capital of the world in financial terms, still it cannot be said to have become a center of consecration whose legitimacy is universally recognized. Here again the very question of legitimacy is one of the things at stake in the game, and the way it is answered depends on the place occupied by those who are prepared to wager on it. Many writers take advantage of this uncertain balance of power in order to play one capital off against the other. Since 1981, for example, the Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Great Britain, has on several occasions been awarded to "not quites," as the Indian writer Bharati Mukherjee calls them - authors whose work has been shaped by immigration, exile, or postcolonization... This (multicultural umbrella) was all that was needed for the critics, confusing cause and effect, to deduce the existence of a "new" literature, even of a veritable literary movement originating in the former British colonial empire. In fact, there was a desire on the part of publishers to create the impression of a group by gathering together under a single label authors who had nothing, or very little, in common. This labeling effect (which may be compared, for example, with the promotion of the Latin American "boom" of the 1960s) turned out to be an extremely effective marketing strategy. The programmed success of the novel by the Indian writer Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy (1993), perfectly illustrates this phenomenon. Critics in both England and France described the book as an indubitable sign of the revitalization of literature in English, even of the "revenge" of the old colonies against the British Empire - and this despite the fact that the literary techniques employed were both typically English and largely outmoded. Indeed, the publisher proudly announced that the book was set in India in the 1950s and written "in the great tradition of Jane Austen and Dickens." In adopting the perennially popular form of the family saga and enlisting the aesthetic norms of the past century in the service of an eminently Western view of the world, the author (a graduate of Oxford and Stanford) showed his eagerness to satisfy all the most obvious criteria of the commercially successful novel. Far from furnishing evidence of some sort of literary liberation, or of the sudden accession of the formerly colonized to literary greatness, A Suitable Boy offered irrefutable proof of the virtually total domination of the English literary model over its cultural area. (hide spoiler)]

Review # 2 was written on 2018-05-16 00:00:00 Joseph Stumpf If you've ever wondered what the ivory tower of literature looks like and how it sees itself from the inside, this book is exactly what you need. "The World Republic of Letters" concerns itself with literary fiction, authors who end up in the canon of literature and the consecration of authors by higher critical instances. This is not to say that Pascale Casanova looks down on popular fiction and/or genres - they simply aren't part of the scope of this book. They aren't even mentioned. (I'm not blaming, I'm explaining) "The World Republic of Letters" is also an intensely, painfully French book. You can tell, because France is the first country to write in the vernacular (after Italy, which doesn't count), and it's always set the cultural tone, translated intensely, consecrated great authors such as Joyce or Faulkner. When other literary centers appeared, they set out to oppose France. If this book were called: "The World Republic of Letters: How France Has Set the Cultural Tone for the Past Few Centuries", it would be appropriate. Because Paris is obviously the center of the literary universe, other literary traditions (such as, say, the Japanese and Chinese ones) are deemed to be isolated and not to count much. I'm sure the Japanese would be quite amused to hear that, considering their tradition, which is nothing to sneeze at. So. I've mentioned what Pascale Casanova's book is not about (popular fiction; fiction not touched by France). Let's discuss what it is about. When you have a great cultural center acknowledged by everyone as such, says Casanova, it tends to become a sort of Greenwhich meridian. It sets the tempo of culture, it decides what is modern and good, and what is not. Everyone else is turning towards it, to see what has been left behind and what is provincial. Authors in other literary zones can aspire towards it and try to copy it; or they might revolt against it in order to build their own, national literature; or they might come to the center because they are underappreciated in their native lands, and they might become consecrated there. Not being a part of the center is a sort of tension which needs to be resolved, especially for authors in emerging literary zones - do they betray their people and become 'modern'? Do they try to do the politically right thing and build on the basis of their own literature? Well, those who decide to become international rather than national meet in cultural centers (such as Paris, never forget Paris) and influence each other there. Their struggles are similar, so why wouldn't their solutions be? It's an interesting book overall, especially if one is overly concerned with the politics of writing and ending up in the canon. It's somewhat stranger when you're on the outside of the ivory tower, looking in.