台湾文学与文化翻译.ppt

台灣文學與文化翻譯week 1 邱貴芬 What is world literature? David Damrosch: 1. world literature is an elliptical refraction of national literatures. 2. world literature is writing that gains in translation. 3. world literature is not a set canon of texts but a mode of reading: a form of detached engagement with worlds beyond our own place and time World literature vs. national literature? Comparatists in the postwar era often…held out messianic hopes for world literature as the cure of the ills of nationalistic separatism, jingoism and internecine violence—and, by implication, advancing the comparatist as the transcendent heir to the narrowness of monolingual specialization. 282 Comparative literature as the grand corrective for “the nationalistic heresy”? What does the ongoing vitality of national literary traditions mean for the study of world literature? World literature as an elliptical refraction of national literatures: Virtually all literary works are born within what we would now call a national literature Works continue to bear the marks of their national origin even after they circulate into world literature, and yet these traces are increasingly diffused and become ever more sharply refracted as a work travels farther from home. Negotiation between 2 different cultures The receiving culture can use the foreign material in all sorts of ways: 1. as a positive model for the future development of its own tradition 2. as a negative case of a primitive, or decadent, strand that must be avoided 3. as an image of radical otherness against which the home tradition can more clearly be defined. 283 World literature is thus always much about the host culture’s values and needs as it is about a work’s source culture; hence it is a double refraction 283 Recognizing the ongoing, vital presence of the national within the life of world literature poses enormous problems for the study of world literature: Lack of time to learn about the cultural underpinnings of the chosen subjects