How Do Literary Works Cross Borders (or Not)? A Sociological Approach to World Literature

What is it about?

This paper analyzes the factors that trigger or hinder the circulation of literary works beyond their geographic and cultural borders, i.e. participating in the mechanisms of the production of World Literature. For the sake of analysis, these factors can be classified into four categories: political (or more broadly ideological), economic, cultural and social. Being embodied by institutions and by individual agents, these factors can support or contradict one another, thus causing tensions and struggles. This paper ends with reflections on the two opposite tendencies that characterize the transnational literary field: isomorphism and the differentiation logics.

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Why is it important?

Texts do no circulate on their own. The sociology of world literature has to study the social conditions of the circulation of literary works in translation, and the agents who are involved in the making of world literature: translators, editors, publishers, literary agents, state representatives, etc.

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