Mapping World Literature explores the study of literature and literary history in light of global changes, looking at what defines world literature in the 21st century. Surveying ideas of literature from Goethe to the present, Thomsen devises a compelling concept of literary constellations. He discusses a wide-range of critical positions, identifies the limits of comparative and post-colonial approaches and examines two specific cases: literature written by migrant writers and the literature of genocide, war and disaster. Mapping World Literature captures new ways of understanding the patterns and trends that emerge in literature, opening up and inspiring research to map patterns in the field.

Product Description: Twentieth-century literature changed understandings of what it meant to be human. Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, in this historical overview, presents a record of literature's changing ideas of mankind, questioning the degree to which literature records and creates visions of the new human...read more