Transnationalism and Translation in Modern Chinese, English, French and Japanese Literatures

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The theory of literary worlds has become increasingly important in comparative and world literatures. But how are the often-contradictory elements of Eastern and Western literatures to cohere in the new worlds such contact creates Drawing on the latest work in philosophical logic and analytic Asian philosophy, this monograph proposes a new model of literary worlds that is best suited to comparative literature dealing with Western and East Asian traditions. Unlike much discussion of world literature anchored in North American traditions, featured here is the transnational work of artists, philosophers, and poets writing in English, French, Japanese and Mandarin in the twentieth century. Rather than imposing sharp borders, this book suggests that vague boundaries link Eastern and Western literary works and traditions, and that degrees of distance can better help us to see the multiple dimensions that both distinguish and join together literary worlds East and West. As such, it enables us to grasp not only how East Asian and Western writers translate one anothers works into their own languages and traditions, but also how modern writers East and West modify their own traditions in order to make them fit in the new constellation of literary worlds brought about by the complex flow of literary information across twentieth-century Eurasia.

Reviews

The fact of the unity and diversity of cultural worlds makes humanistic scholarship infinite. But deep differences impede understanding, maybe even sympathy. Ryan Johnson calls his way through this obstacle an intentional vagueness, a term too modest to reflect the careful analyses and brilliant conjectures that bring his choice of French, Chinese, Japanese and English works into a closer conversation. Haun Saussy, University Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Chicago

Ryan Johnson's _Transnationalism and Translation in Modern Chinese, English, French and Japanese Literatures_ is an important scholarly contribution to comparative literature, world literature and translation studies. It provides us with fascinating critiques of theoretical issues and exciting comparative analyses of individual works. Akitoshi Nagahata, Professor of English and American Literature, Nagoya University

This bracing and illuminating study reanimates literary minds and worlds between East and West. Johnsons conceptual nimbleness from ontologies of vagueness to the force of weak theory permits a fresh exploration of the intrigue of imprecision, moving through a remarkable set of collaborations and adaptations to comprehend the contradictions and boundaries of world literature. Josephine Nock-Hee Park, Professor of English and Asian American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Johnsons book undertakes a challenge of transforming the mostly sociological and quantitative concept of world literature into poetics, literary theory, and the methodology of reading by a surprising move: turning the concepts very limitations, its vagueness and weakness, into an actual philosophical basis of aesthetic and epistemological inquiry. -- Olga V. Solovieva, Critical Inquiry (June 2021)

Author Bio

Ryan Johnson is a tutor and research assistant in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Sydney.