Whose World Literature Is It: English World or Non-English World?

Abstract

Abstract: Critical appraisals of Byron differs sharply in the English world and non-English world. In the English world, among major Romantics in Byron's times, including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats and Byron, Wordsworth has achieved the highest critical acclaim, while Byron the lowest. However, in the non-English world, Byron has enjoyed far greater reputation, and possibly far greater influence than the other five put together. Moreover, most of the writers and poets who praised Byron and were influenced by him are Titanic characters, such as Goethe and Nietzsche from Germany, Hugo from France, Pushkin and Lermontov from Russia, Mickiewicz from Poland, Petofi from Hungary, Brandes from Denmark, and Lu Xun from China. Given such a great difference between the English world and the non-English world on Byron, it seems that the English world just offers a part rather than the whole of the picture. Therefore, the question is: whose literature is it when we talk about world literature?

Key words: Byron, English world, Non-English world, world literature

Gao Xudong. Whose World Literature Is It: English World or Non-English World?[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2017, 39(6): 122-130.

References

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