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Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures, London, Continuum, 2008, 170 pages.
discussed in chapter 1. While world literature is actually more pragmatic, in its transnational dimension, than the national and comparative paradigms, this new critical discourse has been accused of being both “too idealistic and almost void of any methodical ideas.” (5) Developing a method is the challenge world literature scholars face today. Tracing a geography of contemporary world literature is no easy task. What phenomena should be identified as generating significance and therefore assessed? Thomsen mentions “production, readers, preferences, translations, critical valuations” (34), leaving the list open ended… In spatial terms, Thomsen advances the flexible theory of temporary sub-centres, such as the late nineteenth-century Russia of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky or the Latin America of Márquez and Vargas Llosa. The critic also highlights two different authorial attitudes, distinguishing those writers who rely on their immediate local experience from those – such as Borges or Karen Blixen – who “have a world orientation towards a variety of cultures and histories” (44). Although the latter attitude seems to facilitate an author’s reception within a wider context, this cosmopolitan outlook cannot actually be considered as a “prerequisite” (47) to international canonization, as is shown by Joyce’s Ulysses or Proust’s Recherche… What Thomsen importantly claims is that “national and international canonization realistically can be seen as separate if connected systems” (54). Several works which have been “nationally canonized” have actually “had little impact on the international scene” (56) and the opposite is also true. In his attempt to mediate between the two extremes of “seeing an individual work as nearly unique, or just a representation of more general properties in a larger system” (58), Thomsen invokes Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblances” (58), setting the ground for his next two chapters. This marks a transition within the book, which thus proceeds from the discussion of existing theoretical stances to the proposal of a new approach. Right from the introduction, Thomsen asserts that “The international canons consist of several constellations of works that share properties of formal and thematic character.” (3) This idea is the starting point of his critical venture, which aims to identify transnational subsystems of writers and works, such as “Holocaust writers, migrant writers and instantly translated authors.” (23) Two of these categories are discussed in chapters 3 (“Migrant writers and cosmopolitan culture”) and 4 (“Ethics and aesthetics in traumatic literature”). After highlighting the role migrant writers are playing in creating a “postnational literature” (61), Thomsen traces a short history of migrant literature, notably in the modernist period. He then divides contemporary migrant writers into three categories: “the post-colonials, the political exiles and the voluntary migrants.” (85) This