How Do Literary Works Cross Borders (or Not)?

TLDR

Literary circulation is shaped by institutional and individual factors that can support or contradict each other, creating tensions. The study examines what facilitates or impedes literary works from crossing borders and reflects on the opposing tendencies of isomorphism and differentiation in the transnational literary field. The authors categorize the influencing factors into political/ideological, economic, cultural, and social.

Abstract

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.