A Cosmopolitan Approach to Literature - Against Origins and Destinations (Hardcover)

Proposing an elaborate interdisciplinary approach to literary reading of any provenance based on "experimental cosmopolitanism," that is de- and recontextualizing the texts from the points of view of multiple cultural formations and historical moments, this book will help innovative teachers and students to rediscover dialogically and creatively the potential of literature as a life experiment. Comparative, Postcolonial and World Literature programs as well as programs in Cultural Anthropology will find abundant food for seminar discussion and essay topics in the wide range of theories and philosophies covered by the book and its extensive and up to date bibliography. Supported by a thorough critique of local and overarching theories, this novel method will profit from the singularity of each professional or apprentice reader without giving in to cultural essentialism or relativism. Learning to recognize the fundamental plurilingualism of the literary experience through translations and versions of literary texts is enlightening at all levels of a humanist literary education. Theory, here, is not an abstract and rigid superimposition but the dynamic condition of emergence of unforeseen meanings.