Comparative Cultural Studies and Linguistic Hybridities in Literature

Summary

Abstract: In her article “Comparative Cultural Studies and Linguistic Hybridities in Literature.” Sturm-Trigonakis takes her point of departure with Goethe's notion of Weltliteratur and proposes that owing to globalization, literature is undergoing a change in process, content, and linguistic practice. The framework Sturm-Trigonakis constructs is based on comparative cultural studies and its methodology of the contextual (systemic and empirical) approach to the study of literature and culture and the concepts of the macro- and micro-system. In order to exemplify her proposition, Sturm-Trigonakis discusses selected literary texts which show characteristics of linguistic hybridity, the concept of “in-between,” and transculturality, thus located in new Weltliteratur.

Introduction

In 1827 Goethe inaugurated the age of Weltliteratur with his observation that national literature has lost importance and must now be substituted by world literature (Goethe qtd. in Eckermann, Gespräche 174). Goethe's ambiguous inheritance has provoked a plethora of interpretations since then (with regard to current work on this, see, e.g., Birus; Koch; Lamping; Pizer; Prendergast; Schmeling). Two aspects of Goethe's notion, namely world literature as a process of communication and exchange between various national literatures and the anchorage of world literatures in the economic and technical context of Europe at the outset of the nineteenth century offer a common denominator with the contemporary age of globalization.