作为发现的世界文学

World Literature as Discoveries

从地缘政治的角度来看,当今世界在西方和非西方之间,明显存在力量的不平衡,也存在文化资本和知识的不平衡。目前在全球流通的世界文学作品大多是欧洲或西方主要文学传统的作品,至于非西方文学、甚至欧洲“小”的文学,却在其本身的文化范围之外,基本上不为人知,没有翻译成各种语言文字,也没有得到本民族范围之外读者的赞赏。欧洲中心的偏见甚至在今天,仍然对世界文学研究有相当的影响,帕斯卡尔·卡桑诺瓦《文学的世界共和国》一书,就是一个明显的例证。因此,世界文学不仅应该回归文学的阅读,而且应该去发现那些尚未广为人知的世界文学经典。不同的文学传统都早已形成自己的经典,但这些经典尚未超出本身语言文化的范围,在原文读者之外,被介绍给世界上众多的读者。所以世界各文学传统研究文学的学者们,当前重要的任务就是使那些经典著作在全球范围内引起读者和批评界的注意,从而扩展世界文学经典的范围。名副其实的世界文学应该去发现世界不同文学传统,尤其是非西方文学和欧洲“小”文学传统中,那些尚待发现的经典著作。

Given the geopolitical reality of the imbalance of power between the West and the Rest,there is also the imbalance of cultural capital and knowledge.The currently circulating works of world literature are by and large canonical works of the major European and Western literary traditions,while non-Western and even“minor”European literatures remain largely unknown,untranslated,and unappreciated beyond their culture of origin.Even today,traces of Eurocentric biases can still be influential in the study of world literature,as can be seen in Pascale Casanova’s book,The World Republic of Letters.Therefore,world literature should not be just returning to the reading of literature,but to the discovery of many of the world’s yetunknown literary classics,the canonical works that have long been recognized in different literatures but not yet introduced to the global readership beyond their original scope of native readers.It is now the task of literary scholars of the world’s different literary traditions to bring those works to the global critical attention and expand the canon of world literature.World literature in its true sense will be the discovery of the yet-unknown canonical works from the world’s different,especially non-Western and the“minor”European,literary traditions.