Macquarie University

World Literature in English - ENGL207

Although we often study literature within narrow national and linguistic traditions, literature as it’s read outside of universities is much more free-wheeling, moving readily through space and time, and across different literary traditions. World literature - the study of literature that circulates outside the country in which it was originally written - tries to capture this sense of literature in motion. It explores how texts have been read and re-read in new contexts, and how literature has become an interconnected global system. This unit will examine a selection of texts from across the globe, asking: how do different literary traditions relate to each other? How do recent debates about globalisation change the age-old process of world literature? How have colonisation and decolonisation shaped world literature and brought new traditions into contact with each other? Does it matter if we read texts in translation, rather than in their original language?