EDITED BY: STEFAN HELGESSON, ANNIKA MÖRTE ALLING, YVONNE LINDQVIST AND HELENA WULFF World Literatures Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange Edited by Stefan Helgesson, Annika Mörte Alling, Yvonne Lindqvist, and Helena Wulff Published by Stockholm University Press Stockholm University SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden www.stockholmuniversitypress.se Text © The Author(s) 2018 License CC-BY Supporting Agency (funding): Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences) First published 2018 Cover designed by Karl Edqvist Stockholm English Studies (Online) ISSN: 2002–0163 ISBN (Paperback): 978-91-7635-079-9 ISBN (PDF): 978-91-7635-076-8 ISBN (EPUB): 978-91-7635-077-5 ISBN (Mobi): 978-91-7635-078-2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bat This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This license allows for copying any part of the work for personal and commercial use, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Suggested citation: Helgesson, Stefan, Annika Mörte Alling, Yvonne Lindqvist, and Helena Wulff eds. World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/ bat. License: CC-BY. To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi.org/10.16993/bat or scan this QR code with your mobile device. Stockholm English Studies Stockholm English Studies (SES) (ISSN 2002–0163) is a peer- reviewed series of monographs and edited volumes published by Stockholm University Press. SES strives to provide a broad forum for research on English language and literature from all periods. In terms of subjects and methods, the scope is also broad cover- ing: language structure, variation, and meaning, both spoken and written language in all genres, as well as literary scholarship in a broad sense. It is the ambition of SES to place equally high demands on the academic quality of the manuscripts it accepts as those applied by refereed international journals and academic publishers of a similar orientation. Editorial Board Frida Beckman, Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University (email) Claudia Egerer, Associate Professor at the Department of English at Stockholm University Stefan Helgesson, Professor at the Department of English at Stockholm University Nils-Lennart Johannesson, Professor at the Department of English at Stockholm University Maria Kuteeva, Professor at the Department of English at Stockholm University Peter Sundkvist, Associate Professor at the Department of English at Stockholm University Titles in the series 1. Begam, R. and Soderholm, J. 2015. Platonic Occasions: Dialogues on Literature, Art and Culture. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/ sup.baa 2. Shaw, P., Erman, B., Melchers, G. and Sundkvist, P. (eds) 2015. From Clerks to Corpora: essays on the English language yes- terday and today. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/sup.bab 3. Stefan Helgesson, Annika Mörte Alling, Yvonne Lindqvist and Helena Wulff (eds.) 2018. World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Exchange. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bat Peer Review page Guidelines for peer review Stockholm University Press ensures that all book publications are peer-reviewed in two stages. Each book proposal submitted to the Press will be sent to a dedicated Editorial Board of experts in the subject area as well as two independent experts. The full manuscript will be peer reviewed by chapter or as a whole by two independent experts. A full description of Stockholm University Press’ peer-review poli cies can be found on the website: http://www.stockholmuniversity press.se/site/peer-review-policies/ Recognition for reviewers The Editorial Board of Stockholm English Studies applies single-blind review during proposal and manuscript assessment. We would like to thank all reviewers involved in this process. Chris Holmes, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of English, Faculty, Telluride Foundation (TASP)”, Co-Director New Voices Festival, Ithaca College (review of manuscript) Johan Schimanski, Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo (UiO), visiting Professor of Cultural Encounters, University of Eastern Finland (UEF). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1849-2600 (review of pro- posal and manuscript) Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Professor with Special Responsibilities at the School of Communication and Culture – Comparative Literature, Aarhus University. ORCID: https:// orcid.org/0000-0002-4975-6752 (review of proposal, after which Thomsen initiated a research collaboration with Stefan Helgesson, hence he was not eligible to review the full manuscript) Contents 1. General Introduction: The Cosmopolitan and the Vernacular in Interaction 1 Stefan Helgesson PART 1: BEYOND NATIONS: ENGAGING LITERARY HISTORIES 2. Introduction to Part 1 15 Annika Mörte Alling 3. Le Vernaculaire: A Brief Lexical History in French 19 Christina Kullberg 4. One Country, Several Literatures: Towards a Comparative Understanding of Contemporary Literature in Spain 31 Christian Claesson 5. Beyond Chineseness: De-Nationalising and De-Sinicising Modern Chinese Literature 42 Irmy Schweiger 6. “The Original Romance of America”: Slave Narratives and Transnational Networks in Theodore Parker’s American Literary History 59 David Watson 7. Reformist Discourses: Classical Literary Language Versus Modern Written Vernacular in Lu Xun’s Short Story “A Madman’s Diary” 70 Lena Rydholm 8. Reflections on Gender and Small Languages in World Literature Scholarship: Methods of Inclusions and Exclusions 89 Katarina Leppänen PART 2: NEITHER HERE NOR THERE? LOCATIONS AND ORIENTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 9. Introduction to Part 2 103 Helena Wulff 10. Locating Chronic Violence: Billy Kahora’s “How to Eat a Forest” 107 Ashleigh Harris 11. Diasporic Divides: Location and Orientations of “Home” in Pooneh Rohi’s Araben 119 Helena Wulff 12. Zuhura the African Lioness: Performance Poetry, Digital Media and the Transnational Tangle in World Literature 129 Paula Uimonen 13. Literary Ecologies and Post-9/11 Muslim Writing 140 Adnan Mahmutović 14. Worldly Vernaculars in the Anglophone Caribbean 150 Bo G. Ekelund PART 3: WORLD ENOUGH, AND TIME: WORLD-MAKING AND LITERARY PRACTICE 15. Introduction to Part 3 165 Stefan Helgesson 16. Literary World-Making under Apartheid: Staffrider and the Location of Print Culture 171 Stefan Helgesson 17. Documentary Modernism: Worldly Sympathies, Ideal Collectivities and Dissenting Individualism 185 Irina Rasmussen 18. In Conquest of the World and of Modernity: Movements from the Countryside to Paris in Novels by Stendhal, Balzac and Flaubert 199 Annika Mörte Alling 19. The Contemporary Russian Cosmopolitans 211 Anna Ljunggren 20. A World Apart and the World at Large: Expressing Siberian Exile 229 Mattias Viktorin 21. Seclusion versus Accessibility: The Harems of Constantinople as Aesthetic Worlds in Stories by Elsa Lindberg-Dovlette 246 Helena Bodin 22. The Travelling Story of Pettersson in the Pacific 261 Anette Nyqvist 23. Indian Imaginaries in World Literature and Domestic Popular Culture 275 Per Ståhlberg PART 4: LOST AND FOUND: TRANSLATION AND CIRCULATION 24. Introduction to Part 4 289 Yvonne Lindqvist 25. Translation Bibliomigrancy: The Case of Contemporary Caribbean Literature in Scandinavia 295 Yvonne Lindqvist 26. Profiles of Italy: Localising Practices of Swedish Publishing Houses 310 Cecilia Schwartz 27. Literary Migration as Transformation 324 Paul Tenngart 28. A Cosmopolitan North in Nordic Noir: Turning Swedish Crime Fiction into World Literature 340 Louise Nilsson 29. Swedes in French: Cultural Transfer from Periphery to Literary Metropolis 355 Andreas Hedberg 30. Gender and the Circulation of African Lusophone Literature into the Portuguese Literary System 369 Chatarina Edfeldt 31. World Literary Studies and East African Anglophone Literature 383 Erik Falk Notes on contributors 397 Index 405 1. General Introduction: The Cosmopolitan and the Vernacular in Interaction Stefan Helgesson The world seems to be up for grabs – conceptually speaking – in contemporary critical discourse. The anthropocene, globalisation, planetary thinking, world-system theory, worlding, worldedness: there is much evidence to support Eric Hayot’s claim that “world” (and its variants) has become a word with “rhetorically unmatched prestige”.1 Literary scholarship, as will be discussed below, has its own version of world-speak, namely world literature, a concept and a field of study that has generated a significant amount of debate in recent years. The present volume, dear reader, that you either are holding in your hand or (which is more likely) reading on a screen, puts itself at an angle to that scholarly conversation, building on its insights but also presenting some alternative points of departure for thinking “world” and “literature” in conjunction. If we agree with the fundamental phenomenological insight that the world is only possible to experience and think from within a given emplacement in time and language, it should be evident that the world is never just “out there” but always also “here”.