Jernej Habjan’s guest lecture at Goethe University Frankfurt

On 4 December 2025, Jernej Habjan, member of the ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, held a guest lecture at the Department of English and American Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt. As a guest of the Department’s Forum of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Habjan presented the lecture ‘The Global More-than-Novel: The Global Novel as Form and Object’. In the lecture, he argued that there is more than one way in which the global novel has been defined as itself plus something else: the global novel has been seen as the global more-than-novel insofar as it has been viewed as born translated, as born televised, as born serialized, as standing in for all global literature, and as blended with its setting. The global novel thus appears as itself plus, respectively, its translations, its screen adaptations, its sequels, its medium and its setting. In all these cases, Habjan argued, there is a spillover effect between objects and forms: when the novel is born translated, its global spread via translation is written into its form; the same holds when it is born televised or serialized; when it stands in for all global literature, its global reach is fueled by its protean form and its novelization of non-novelistic genres; and when it is blended with its setting, its market is potentially global due to its narration of potentially global processes. In all these cases, the novel, in order to become global, has to become more than itself; it has to become the global more-than-novel.