World Literature, the Canon, and the Case of Saramago

World Literature, the Canon, and the Case of Saramago

The article revisits some key recent work about world literature, especially Rebecca Walkowitz's Born Translated (2015), to assess the criteria for inclusion in a current, synchronic World Literature canon. Contrasting the global novel, the cosmopolitan novel, and works rooted in more local or national traditions, whether realist or modernist, the article questions the values at play in contemporary canonization, especially as revealed in the pedagogy of David Damrosch. In an attempt to situate Jose Saramago, the similar cases of various authors are reviewed, including J. M. Coetzee and Antonio Lobo Antunes. Drawing on some criticism of world literature from postcolonial discourse and from comparative literature, I propose caution for critics and teachers in assuming, in our global era, that we have left behind the older national traditions and canons. While we cannot and should not abandon the project of World Literature, we need to be more critical of its on-going development as a discipline and its practical formation of a canon.