The elephant in the room: Literary theory in world literature

Abstract

We often think about the challenge of translating literature in terms of form and content. Should one attempt to preserve the semantic content of, say, a Chinese poem in English translation, or should one attempt to replicate such formal devices as rhyme and rhythm? This form-content way of thinking leads most accounts of global modernism and world literature to neglect the importance of literary theory. The failure to address the uses, translations, and adaptations of theory constitutes a blind spot in attempts to read modern and contemporary literature closely or distantly on a local or a global scale. I illustrate theory's crucial role in world literature through the work of two influential contemporary poet–translators: Chinese poet Bei Dao's 北島 use of Russian Formalist theory; and Anglo-Canadian digital poet John Cayley's deployment of aesthetic theory derived from Huayan 華嚴 Buddhism. Both Bei Dao and Cayley adapt and develop theories that undermine the form/content and local/foreign dichotomies that still plague discussions of translation and comparative and world literature. Their examples suggest that in developing our own theories of world literature we should not simply recognize but also learn from the role of theory in literature's global circulation.