Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:26:12.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rights, Permissions, Claims: World Literature and the Borders of Reading

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

B. Venkat Mani
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 2016, in the midst of the en masse arrival of refugees in europe, the austrian library association brought out a welcome poster, a Willkommensplakat. At the center of the poster is a human figure with his back toward the viewer, standing upright on a stack of books. The figure bears an uncanny resemblance to the man in Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (circa 1817), the famous painting by the German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. In the welcome poster, however, Friedrich's willful, romantic wanderer, standing on the solid ground of rocks, is replaced by a migrant, forced to leave his nation of residence, seeking refuge, perched on precarious grounds. Instead of a sea of fog, the figure in the poster faces a vast screen, on which the word “welcome” is spelled out in twenty-nine world languages from Arabic to Yoruba, including sign language.

Type
Theories and Methodologies New Geographies of Reading
Information
PMLA , Volume 134 , Issue 1: Special Topic Cultures of Reading , January 2019 , pp. 144 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Anzakúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. Aunt Lute Books, 1999.Google Scholar
Book Publishing: Key Insights at a Glance. Pricewater-houseCoopers, 2015, www.pwc.com/gx/en/global-entertainment-media-utlook/assets/2015/book-publishing-key-insights-1-global-book-revenue.pdf.Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette M., and Isabel Hofmeyr. Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons. Duke UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Education for All: Literacy for Life. UNESCO, 2005, unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001416/141639e.pdf.Google Scholar
Fiftieth Anniversary of International Literacy Day: Literacy Rates Are on the Rise but Millions Remain Illiterate. UNESCO Institute of Statistics Fact Sheet, no. 38, Sept. 2016, uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs38–50th-anniversary-of-international-literacy-day-literacy-rates-are-on-the-rise-but-millions-remain-illiterate-2016-en.pdf.Google Scholar
Fraser, Antonia, editor. The Pleasure of Reading. Blooms-bury, 2015.Google Scholar
Friedrich, Caspar David. Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer. Circa 1817, Hamburger Kunsthalle.Google Scholar
Jaipur Literature Festival. jaipurliteraturefestival.org/. Accessed 18 May 2017.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. Introductory note. Nex⊘, pp. v-vi.Google Scholar
Mani, B. Venkat. “Multilingual Code-Stitching in Ultraminor World Literatures: Reading Abhimanyu Unnuth's Lāla Pasīnā (1977) with Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies (2008).” Journal of World Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, 2018, pp. 373–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mani, B. Venkat. Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany's Pact with Books. Fordham UP, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manseau, Peter. Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. Simon and Schuster, 2008.Google Scholar
Nex⊘, Martin Andersen. Pelle the Conqueror. translated by Muir, Jesse and Miall, Bernard, Peter Smith, 1930.Google Scholar
Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa. Writers in Politics: Essays. Heine-mann, 1981.Google Scholar
World, NOP. “NOP World Culture Score Index Examines Global Media Habits”. Market Research World, 1 July 2005, marketresearchworld.net/content/view/102/77/.Google Scholar
Pennac, Daniel. The Rights of the Reader. translated by Ardizzone, Sarah, Penguin Random House, 2015.Google Scholar
Sanādhya, Totārāma. Bhootlane ki kathā: Giramita ke anubhava. 1951. Edited by Kumāra, Āśutosha and Yadav, Yo-gendra, Rajakamal Prakashan, 2012.Google Scholar
Sanādhya, Totārāma. My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands and The Story of the Haunted Line. Translated by John Dunham Kelly and Uttra Kumari Singh, Quality Print Ltd., 2003.Google Scholar
Sanādhya, Totārāma. Phijīdwīpa mem mere 21 varsha. 1914. Banarasidāsa Caturvedī, 1973.Google Scholar
Sîn-liqe-unninni. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs. The Longman Anthology of World Literature, edited by Damrosch, David and Pike, David, compact ed., Longman, 2008, pp. 71–113.Google Scholar
Tharoor, Shashi. Bookless in Baghdad: Reflections on Writing and Writers. Arcade Publishing, 2012.Google Scholar
The Thousand and One Nights. Translated by Powys Mathers. The Longman Anthology of World Literature, edited by Damrosch, David and Pike, David, compact ed., Longman, 2008, pp. 1099–151.Google Scholar
Vālmīki. The Ramayan of Vālmīki. Translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith, Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1963. Verse trans.Google Scholar
“Willkommensplakat”. Büchereiverband Österreichs, www.bvoe.at/themen/grenzenlos_lesen/willkommensplakat. Accessed 18 May 2017.Google Scholar