World literature has often been thought of as a timeless set of world-famous masterpieces, or more generally as the sum of all the world’s literatures.Yet any view of the world is necessarily a view from somewhere.In any given time and place,world literature exists in practical terms as the body of foreign works actually available in bookstores and assigned to students in classes, together with those authors of the readers’national tradition that circulate transnationally in turn.This talk will discuss the challenges and the opportunities involved in a comparative exploration of the varieties of world literature in different regions of the world.
世界文学经常被认为是一套超越时间的世界名著，或者被笼统地看作是世界文学的全体。然而，任何关于世界的观点都必然是某个地方的观点。在任何具体的时间和地域内，世界文学是具体存在的：是书店里可以买到的外国文学的全体和课堂上分配给学生阅读的书目，还包括来自这些读者本国传统而在国外流传的那些作家。本报告将讨论对世界上不同地区的多种世界文学的比较性探索的挑战和机会。
