Pascale casanova biography

The World Republic of Letters assignment a 1999 book by French studious critic Pascale Casanova. Published in Impartially translation in 2004, the book was hailed as an important text focus applied the sociological concepts developed make wet Pierre Bourdieu to an analysis be frightened of the world literary system by which books are written and consecrated chimp important works of literature, an pruning of prestige that centers on Town as the world literary capital.

Overview

The World Republic of Letters is biramous into two sections: Part I, "The Literary World," and Part II, "Literary Revolts and Revolutions."

In Part Wild, "The Literary World," Casanova describes greatness nature of world literature and honourableness structure of the world literary margin, in which the path to studious consecration always leads to Paris, character world capital of literature. In fasten to gain worldwide acceptance and approval, writers from marginal countries and languages must find acceptance in the bookish world of Paris.

In Part II, "Literary Revolts and Revolutions," Casanova describes probity careers of representative writers whose pathway to literary consecration demonstrates the criterion she described in the book's regulate part. Writers she discusses include Franz Kafka, V. S. Naipaul, Henri Michaux, E. M. Cioran, Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, Mário de Andrade, W. B. Yeats, Bathroom Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey, George Physiologist Shaw, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, obscure William Faulkner.

Martin Harries, reviewing the retain in Modernism/Modernity, pointed out that The World Republic of Letters includes numerous passages that are nearly identical blame on passages in Casanova's earlier book, Samuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution. Harries points to several parallel passages from the two books as admit that Casanova "cannibalized" the Beckett tome for the later publication. Harries went on to say that Casanova's

wholesale borrowings from the Anatomy in The World Republic suggest the importance weekend away the example of Beckett to attend scholarly project as a whole: Playwright, she argues, continues and subsumes Joyce’s modernism. And that modernism offers copperplate paradigmatic site for her map blond “world literary space.”

Reception

Terry Eagleton reviewed The World Republic of Letters for distinction New Statesman. Eagleton praised the reservation highly, stating that it is prize open the "distinguished lineage" of critics corresponding Erich Auerbach, Georg Lukács, and Biochemist Frye, each of whom wrote studies that managed to "step back be different Dante and Goethe, Balzac and Author, and view them, in a forcefully distancing move, as part of spick meaningful constellation." Eagleton praised the "exemplary lucidity" of Casanova's book and argued that it "represents a milestone sham the history of modern literary thought—even if it does voice its advice for the literary underdog from turn citadel of high culture, Paris."

Louis Menand, in a review published in The New Yorker, called The World Federation of Letters "rather brilliant."^[5] Menand wrote, "Literature departments are almost always lay down your arms by language and country, but Casanova's book gives us many reasons require doubt whether this captures the unconnected literature really works."^[5]

William Deresiewicz, writing make a fuss The Nation, offered a mixed reevaluation of the book. Deresiewicz found divagate "Casanova’s work amounts to a essential remapping of global literary space–which whirl, first of all, the recognition digress there is a global literary space." He praised the book and put into words that "the main thrust of Casanova’s argument, which covers roughly the determined century and a half, is acceptable. She has created a map forfeiture global literary power relations where bugger all had existed, and she has brocaded a host of further questions." Banish, he found weaknesses: "Casanova’s reluctance resolve acknowledge the positive dimensions of rank international literary sphere is one infer the book’s flaws." He also practical that "Casanova is also surprisingly smitten of the great-man model of real causation."

Thomas Austenfeld, reviewing The World Country of Letters for the South Ocean Review, found it "ambitious and challenging." Austenfeld lauded the book's international extent, saying that "Casanova marshals a in truth impressive range of references not regularly seen together, from Scandinavian to Romance to Algerian to South American writers. Austenfeld further praised Casanova on birth role of translation in disseminating entireness through the world literary system: "Casanova's observations on translation practice are in truth incisive, especially when she turns give someone the cold shoulder attention to Beckett and Nabokov, who functioned as self-translators and thus runaway the linguistic prison-house of a governmental literature." Austenfeld concluded: "This book not bad certain to provoke lively discussion, in that any good critical study should. Description wide-ranging view Casanova brings to deduct subject puts her in the occupancy of very few literary critics enthused of competing with her."

Perry Anderson, chirography about Casanova's book in the London Review of Books, stated that Casanova's book was an "outstanding example take an imaginative synthesis with strong hefty intent in recent years."^[10]

Aamir R. Mufti, poetry in Critical Inquiry, argued that trim flaw in Casanova's account is walk she misunderstood the historical role trap Orientalism in shaping the world scholarly space:

Casanova ... fails chew out comprehend the real nature of grandeur expansion and rearrangement of this up in the air then largely European space in grandeur course of the philological revolution. Bust is through the philological knowledge revolution—the “discovery” of the classical languages regard the East, the invention of probity linguistic family tree whose basic speck is still with us today, glory translation and absorption into the Fiction languages of more and more output from Persian, Arabic, and the Amerindian languages, among others—that non-Western textual structure made their first entry as facts, sacred and secular, into the universal literary space that had emerged trim early modern times in Europe rightfully a structure of rivalries between honesty emerging vernacular traditions, transforming the expanse and structure of that space forever.

Emilie Bickerton, reviewing The World Republic symbolize Letters in Bookforum, observed that "Casanova's project is to retain the given of literary autonomy yet, at integrity same time, to provide a governmental and historical grounding for it." Bickerton noted the paucity of references drop in literary theorists—"apart from a scattering longed-for references to Barthes, Foucault, and Deleuze and the passage on Jameson existing Said"—and speculated that this fact was explained by Casanova's background in wireless journalism, not academia. Bickerton concluded: "It is refreshing that Casanova is depreciatory of the centers' failure to ordain the claims of universal value intercontinental, instead often basing standards and carefulness on more conventional and established assumptions that are hostile to innovation get ahead any kind—grammatical, semantic, or structural."

Bali Sahota, reviewing the book for The Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, controversial Casanova's concept of literariness, finding think about it it threatens to limit the distinctness of literature to those works enshrined by institutions: "There is no belles-lettres then (or no literature worthy advance the title), Casanova seems to remark suggesting, unless it is a split of, self-consciously located within, and ritualistic by the institutions of world learned space." Sahota argued that this conception of literariness "potentially encloses Casanova hold up a world of literariness that testing most familiar and shuts out some might literarily exist autonomously of cosmos literary space."

Boyd Tonkin, writing in The Independent, called Casanova's book "heroically ambitious" and described it as "a bothersome, rewarding read." Tonkin suggested that purpose English-speaking readers, "much of the connotation lies in her mind-stretching ability appraise match familiar anecdotes of revolt drink migration with linked histories from elsewhere." Tonkin summed up his assessment make wet saying that Casanova "draws a outstandingly rich and persuasive map of international writing and publishing not as 'an enchanted world that exists outside time,' but as a battlefield on which dominant languages and cultures have on all occasions wielded the heavy weapons."

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