Guest Lectures by David Damrosch (Harvard)

The Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, the Historical Seminar Program of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU), and the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, cordially invite you to two English-language guest lectures by David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University:

The World in the Nation: From National Literatures to National Markets (Monday, 10 March 2014, 12:00, Mala dvorana ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Novi trg 4, 2nd floor) and

What Is “Literature”? Notes toward a Global Poetics (Tuesday, 11 March 2014, 18:00, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, Room 2).

The World in the Nation: From National Literatures to National Markets

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the field of cultural production provides a basis for rethinking canon formation and the nature of a “national literature.” Often conceived on a philological basis as the works written in a “national language,” national literatures may more productively be seen in terms of national markets. This talk will discuss works that disrupt the intimate link between a national literature and the national language, whether by their the entry into a new national space (Bartolomé de Las Casas “made English” by his early translators; international productions of Ionesco’s plays), or by emigrant writers who stay loyal to their language of origin: Marguerite Yourcenar, the first female member of the Académie Française, wrote much of her work in the United States, and should be considered an American as well as a Belgian/French writer.

What Is “Literature”? Notes toward a Global Poetics

As generally understood today, the concept of literature is of relatively recent origin, originating in Europe only in the eighteenth century. Our modern conception was less an outright invention, though, than an adaptation of older ideas of poetry and poetic language. Such ideas are found in many different cultures and eras, though often in very distinctive forms. Traditionally, aestheticians have developed general theories of poetry and of poetic language from quite specific corpuses of literary works: classical and Western European poetry for most Western theory, Tang Dynasty poetry in China, or classical Sanskrit poetry in India. How far can such regionally derived poetics apply to works written in other traditions? This talk will discuss the challenge of developing terms that can do justice to both the commonalities and the incompatibilities of understandings of literature around the world and across time.