Book contents
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Genealogies
- 1 Ancient World Literature
- 2 The Silk Roads of World Literature
- 3 Arabic Literary Prose, Adab Literature, and the Formation of Islamicate Imperial Culture
- 4 Worldmaking and Early Modernity: Cartographic Poesis in Europe and South Asia
- 5 Colonial Philology and the Origins of World Literature
- 6 Globalism’s Prehistory: Technologies of Modernism
- 7 After 1945: Holocaust Memory, Postcoloniality, and World History
- 8 World Literature after 1989: Revolutions in Motion
- Part II Thinking the World
- Part III Transregional Worlding
- Part IV Cartographic Shifts
- Part V World Literature and Translation
- Part VI Poetics, Genre, Intermediality
- Part VII Scales, Polysystems, Canons
- Part VIII Modes of Reading and Circulation
- Part IX The Worldly and the Planetary
- Index
- References
1 - Ancient World Literature
from Part I - Genealogies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2021
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- The Cambridge History of World Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Genealogies
- 1 Ancient World Literature
- 2 The Silk Roads of World Literature
- 3 Arabic Literary Prose, Adab Literature, and the Formation of Islamicate Imperial Culture
- 4 Worldmaking and Early Modernity: Cartographic Poesis in Europe and South Asia
- 5 Colonial Philology and the Origins of World Literature
- 6 Globalism’s Prehistory: Technologies of Modernism
- 7 After 1945: Holocaust Memory, Postcoloniality, and World History
- 8 World Literature after 1989: Revolutions in Motion
- Part II Thinking the World
- Part III Transregional Worlding
- Part IV Cartographic Shifts
- Part V World Literature and Translation
- Part VI Poetics, Genre, Intermediality
- Part VII Scales, Polysystems, Canons
- Part VIII Modes of Reading and Circulation
- Part IX The Worldly and the Planetary
- Index
- References
Summary
Though world literature is often considered a modern phenomenon, a range of world literatures developed in cosmopolitan cultures in antiquity, as was already recognized by the early comparatist Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett. This essay discusses examples of world literature created in the Hellenistic and imperial Roman world and the ancient Near East, looking in particular at relations between imperial centers and colonial peripheries.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 49 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
References
Apter, Emily. 2013. Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability. Verso.Google Scholar
Apuleius, . 1989–1996. Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass). Ed. and trans. Arthur Hanson, J.. 2 vols. (Loeb Classical Library). Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Apuleius, 1994. The Golden Ass. Ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh. (Oxford World Classics). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beecroft, Alexander. 2015. An Ecology of World Literature: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Verso.Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Baidik. 2016. “On Comparatism in the Colony: Archives, Methods, and the Project of Weltliteratur.” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 42, No. 2: 677–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensis. 1983. Ed. Elliger, K. and Rudolph, W., Bibelgesellschaft, Deutsche. 2nd ed. New Revised Standard Version, 1989. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Damrosch, David. 2007. “Scriptworlds: Writing Systems and the Formation of World Literature.” Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 2: 195–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, Andrew, ed. and trans. 1999. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation. Penguin.Google Scholar
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1984. Conversations with Eckermann: 1823–1832. Trans. John Oxenford. North Point Press.Google Scholar
Lambert, W. G., ed. and trans. 1960. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford University Press,Google Scholar
Shulgi of Ur. “Šulgi B,” “Šulgi C,” “Šulgi D.” Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.2.02#; http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.2.03#; http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.2.04#.Google Scholar
Tigay, Jeffrey H. 1982.The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
West, M. L. 1997. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zabel, Blaž. 2019. “Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, World Literature, and the Colonial Comparisons.” Journal of World Literature, Vol. 4, No. 3: 330–49.Google Scholar