Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters

This book offers an account of how the modern idea of the literary emerged, through the colonial archives. Situated at the cusp of postcolonialism and world literature, it offers a multilingual, multicultural, and comparative account of how literature became one of the most powerful cultural expressions of modernity.

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In a radical and ambitious reconceptualization of the field, this book argues that global literary culture since the eighteenth century was fundamentally shaped by colonial histories. It offers a comprehensive account of the colonial inception of the literary sovereign – how the realm of literature was thought to be separate from history and politics – and then follows that narrative through a wide array of different cultures, multilingual archives, and geographical locations. Providing close studies of colonial archives, German philosophy of aesthetics, French realist novels, and English literary history, this book shows how colonialism shaped and reshaped modern literary cultures in decisive ways. It breaks fresh ground across disciplines such as literary studies, anthropology, history, and philosophy, and invites one to rethink the history of literature in a new light.