"On themes
What is 'theme'?
Theme is the underlying idea of a text that predominates the action, setting, description, style, form and structure of a literary work. Its source is the work; however, it is not immediately discernible to the reader. It is a result of interpretation by the reader and depends on the prior literary and cultural experience of such a reader. Therefore, it is secondary to the work, which is to say that it cannot be in and of itself in the text, like plot, form and structure. It is a product of both imaginative and real experiences of the reader at work. It is, therefore, located within the domain of criticism, which is secondary to the work, in relation to the primacy of the text. This, of course, is not true of texts dealt with in cultural studies and new historicism. However, for the sake of this study, theme is somewhat secondary to the works that will be taken up as world literature.
This might be a good point to ask: What is literary and what is not?
What are some of the famous themes in literature across the globe?
abandonment
grief
race
alienation
guilt
regret
ambition
heroism
rejection
American dream, the
hope
religion
childhood
identity
responsibility
coming of age
illness
science and technology
commodification/commercialization
individual and society
sex and sexuality
community
innocence and experience
social class
cruelty
isolation
spirituality
death
justice
stages of life
education
love
success
ethics
memory
suffering
family
nationalism
survival
fate
nature
tradition
freedom
oppression
violence
futility
parenthood
work
gender
pride
Source: McClinton-Temple, Jennifer, editor. Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. Facts on File, 2011.
communication
Source: "Communication as a Literary Theme: A Case Study" by Gabriela Pereira.
"Thematic features for intertextual analysis" lecture by Chris Forstall Lavinia Galli Milić;
"Interview: Romila Thapar: ‘Hindutva is not the same as Hinduism’ by JIPSON JOHN & JITHEESH P.M.";
"Prologue: The Fundamental Theme of World Literature" in A New Philosohphy of Literature: A Fundamental Theme and Unity of World Literature: the Vision of the Infinite and the Universalist Literary Tradition by Nicholas Hagger;
Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs, Volume 1 by Jean-Charles Seigneuret;
"Selected Themes in the Literature on Memory and Their Pertinence to Archives" by Craig, Barbara L., and Francis J. Ditter. The American Archivist, vol. 65, no. 2, 2002, pp. 276–289. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40294210. Accessed 4 July 2021.
Places Through the Body by Heidi J. Nast and Steve Pile;
Themes in World Literature: With a Guide for Writing about Literature by Houghton Mifflin;
Themes in World Literature by Philip J. McFarland, George P. Elliott;
"Significant Themes in 19th-Century Literature" by Matthew L. Jockers and David Mimno;
"Some Theoretical and Methodological Topics for Comparative Literature" by Earl Miner;
The Imperical Theme: Further Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tragedies, Including the Roman Plays by George Wilson Knight;
"‘Race’, Time and the Revision of Modernity" by Homi K. Bhabha;
The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe by Ayesha Ramachandran;
How do themes develop across texts, spaces, cultures and times?
The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space by Robert T. Tally (ed.);
"Literary Space" by Sheila Hones;
"The Textual Space: On the Notion of Text" by Jenaro Talens and Juan M. Company;
Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto by Stephen Greenblatt et al;
"Reconceptualising ‘Time’ and ‘Space’ in the Era of Electronic Media and Communications" by Panayiota Tsatsou;
Lefebvre, Henri. State, Space, World. Translated by Gerald Moore, Neil Brenner, and Stuart Elden. Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden. 2009.
"Lefebvre’s Production of Space in the Context of Turkey: A Comprehensive Literature Survey" by Husik Ghulyan;
Ball, Eric L. “Literary Criticism for Places.” Symplokē, vol. 14, no. 1/2, 2006, pp. 232–251. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40550723. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.
Jeremiah, Milford A. (2000) "The Use of Place in Writing and Literature," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 7. Available at: https://doi.org/10.9707/2168-149X.1352.
Literature and Cartography: Theories, Histories, Genres by Anders Engberg-Pedersen (ed.);
The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century and "In defence of the global novel" by Adam Kirsch;
"Contemporary Fiction as Weltliteratur: Adam Kirsch’s The Global Novel" by Sean Seeger;
Writing on Cities by Henri Lefebvre;
"Mapping Literature: Towards a Geography of Fiction" by Barbara Piatti, Hans Rudolf Bär, Anne-Kathrin Reuschel, Lorenz Hurni and William Cartwright;
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference - New Edition by Dipesh Chakrabarty;
"The Globalization of the Novel and the Novelization of the Global. A Critique of World Literature" by Mariano Siskind;
When and under what circumstances do they develop, that they transcend their original text?
"The Becoming-Literature of the World: Pheng Cheah’s Case for World Literature" by Shir Alon;
Can themes be spatialized and temporalized? Can they be quanitatively scaled and mapped?
"Time after Time: Temporality, Temporalization" by Timothy J.A. Clark;
Unamuno, E.S. GIS and telescopic reading: between spatial and digital humanities. Neohelicon 44, 65–81 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-017-0381-1;
Stockhammer, Robert. "World literature or Earth literature? Remarks on a distinction". Re-mapping World Literature, edited by Gesine Müller, Jorge J. Locane and Benjamin Loy, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 211-224. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110549577-014;
Juvan, Marko. “From Spatial Turn to GIS-Mapping of Literary Cultures.” European Review, vol. 23, no. 1, 2015, pp. 81–96., doi:10.1017/S1062798714000568;
Hajdu, Péter. "How to begin a sequel?" Frontiers of Narrative Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2020, pp. 46-58. https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2020-0005;
Italiano, Federico. Translation and Geography. Routledge: Oxfordshire, 2016;
Neumann, Birgit and Rippl, Gabriele. "Anglophone World Literatures: Introduction" Anglia, vol. 135, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2017-0001;
Sadana, Rashmi. English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India. Uinversity of Calfornia Press, 2012;
Gupta, Dipankar. "Project Modernity: Intersubjectivity as Iso-ontology". Learning to Forget. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 1-38;
"How Useful Is Thematic Cartography of Literature?" by Jörg Döring;
"Exokeanismós: The (Un)Mappability of Literature" by Robert Stockhammer;
New Perspectives on the Origins of Language edited by Claire Lefebvre, Bernard Comrie, Henri Cohen;
Time, Literature, and Cartography After the Spatial Turn by Adam Barrows;
Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures by Mads Rosendahl Thomsen;
MAPPING FRONTIERS ACROSS MEDIEVAL ISLAM: Geography, Translation, and the cAbbasid Empire by Travis Zadeh;
Spatial Imaginaries in Mid -Tang China Geography, Cartography, and Literature by Ao Wang;
"Literary geography: setting and narrative space" by Sheila Hones;
"Spaces of Intertextuality/ The Intertextuality of Space" by Marko Juvan;
Spatial Literary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space, Geography, and the Imagination by Robert T. Tally Jr.;
"Literary Studies and the Spatial Turn (Abstract)" by Kathrin Winkler / Kim Seifert / Heinrich Detering;
"Mapping Lake District Literature";
"Towards a GIS Analysis of Literary Cultures: The Making of the Slovenian Ethnoscape Through Literature" by Marko Juvan and Joh Dokler;
How can 'theme' be spatially and temporally represented on a map?
"Mapping an Elusive Terrain: literature " by Meenakshi Mukherjee;
"The Theme of Nature in World Literature : The Precautionary Principle in the Literature Classroom" by Cheryl M. Clark
Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. "Geophilosophy". What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell III. USA: Columbia UP. 1996.
Spatiality by Robert T. Tally Jr.
Temporalities by Russell West-Pavlov;
"Geoparsing, GIS, and Textual Analysis: Current Developments in Spatial Humanities Research" by Ian Gregory, Christopher Donaldson, Patricia Murrieta-Flores, and Paul Rayson;
"GIS and Literary History: Advancing Digital Humanities research through the Spatial Analysis of historical travel writing and topographical literature" by Patricia Murrieta-Flores, Christopher Donaldson, Ian Gregory;
"Studying Urban Space and Literary Representations Using GIS: Lisbon, Portugal, 1852–2009" by Daniel Alves and Ana Isabel Queiroz;;
"The geospatial humanities: past, present and future" by Patricia Murrieta-Flores & Bruno Martins (2019);
"From close reading to spatial analysis: literature, collaborative work and GIS" by Daniel Alves and Ana Isabel Queiroz;
"Geo‐spatial analyses in education research: the critical challenge and methodological possibilities" by Christopher Lubienski and Jin Lee;
"Networks, Maps, and Time: Visualizing Historical Networks Using Palladio" by Melanie Conroy;
Can themes be compared across texts, spaces, cultures and times?
"Why Compare?" by R. Radhakrishnan;
"Toward World Literary Knowledges: Theory in the Age of Globalization" by Revathi Krishnaswamy;
"The literary cultures of the future" by Bidisha ;
"Frameworks of Comparison" by Benedict Anderson;
"Reading in a World of Wonderlands" by Rebecca L. Walkowitz;
How can they be compared?
"Object movement symmetries in British English dialects: Experimental evidence for a mixed case/locality approach" by William Haddican and Anders Holmberg;
How can comparativity of themes be presented on maps? Can they be compared in a single map?
"Themes and theorisations: rebalancing comparative education?" by Donatella Palomba;
Can themes be computed?
"Techniques to Identify Themes in Qualitative Data" by Gery W. Ryan & H. Russell Bernard;
"Turbulent Flow: A Computational Model of World Literature" by Hoyt Long and Richard Jean So;
"A comparative study of thematic mapping and scientific visualization" by Lingfang Ding & Liqiu Meng;
"An Evaluation of Interactive Map Comparison Techniques" by MJ Lobo;
Geocriticism by Bertrand Westphal;
"Deep Mapping and the Spatial Humanities" by David J. Bodenhamer, Trevor M. Harris and John Corrigan;
"The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship" by David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan and Trevor M. Harris;
"From Spatial Analysis to Geospatial Science" by Brian J. L. Berry, Daniel A. Griffith and Michael R. Tiefelsdorf;
On maps and map-making
What are maps?
Map by Charles F. Fuechsel;
Ways of Mapping by Daniel Dorling, David Fairbairn;
World Regional Geography by Caitlin Finlayson;
Why are they created?
What are the basic tenets of map-making?
2000 Years of Map Making by Arthur Hunt;
Dewey on Metaphysics, Meaning Making, and Maps by James W. Garrison;
What is a thematic map?
As the name suggests, thematic maps are concerned with a particular theme or topic of interest. While reference maps emphasize the location of geographic features, thematic maps are more concerned with how things are distributed across space. Such things are often abstract concepts such as life expectancy around the world, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in Europe, or literacy rates across India. One of the strengths of mapping, and in particular of thematic mapping, is that it can make such abstract and invisible concepts visible and comparable on a map.
from Maps and Map Types;
Why Map Literature? Geospatial Prototyping for Literary Studies and Digital Humanities by Randa El Khatib;
"The 7 Best Thematic Map Types for Geospatial Data" by Abdishakur;
Has anyone mapped world literature before?
Yes!
Mapping World Literature with Mapbox by Tess Stevens;
Maps of Empire: A Topography of World Literature by Kyle Wanberg;
World Map of Literature by Alex Santoso;
How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds by Sarah Laskow;
What is world literature?
What Is World Literature? by David Damrosch reviewed by Michael Wood;
"Conjectures on World Literature" by Franco Moretti;
"Literature as a World" by Pascale Casanova;
Casanova re-establishes literature's link with history and the world; she thinks of world literary space" and world literary systems, which can be further thought of with world system theory and systems thinking.
Auerbach, Erich, et al. “PHILOLOGY AND ‘WELTLITERATUR.’” The Centennial Review, vol. 13, no. 1, 1969, pp. 1–17. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23738133. Accessed 28 Jan. 2021.
"The Relevance of Weltliteratur" by Longxi Zhang;
Wiltliteratur, a nineteenth-century European use of world literature as a term by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe becomes to a twenty first century phenomenon.
"Goethe's "World Literature" Paradigm and Contemporary Cultural Globalization" by John Pizer;
"Author, author: The world of 'world' literature" by Pankaj Mishra;
World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics by J. Daniel Elam;
"World: The World of World Literature". In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt, by MICHAEL ALLAN, Princeton University Press, PRINCETON; OXFORD, 2016, pp. 17–38. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1q1xshm.6. Accessed 26 Jan. 2021.
Zhou, Jing. "Could World Literature be the Future of Comparative Literature?." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 19.5 (2017): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3112>;
Juxtaposing world literature with comparative literature as an off-shoot of the latter, "world literature" is not ready to take the responsibility of becoming itself, since, according to Zhou in this article, "world literature" is Euro and North America centered. Hence, it is unrepresentative of the world.
Stockhammer, Robert. "World literature or Earth literature? Remarks on a distinction". Re-mapping World Literature, edited by Gesine Müller, Jorge J. Locane and Benjamin Loy, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 211-224. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110549577-014;
Solleveld, Floris. " Afterlives of the Republic of Letters: Learned Journals and Scholarly Community in the Early Nineteenth Century". Erudition and the Republic of Letters 5.1 (2020): 82-116. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00501003 Web.
"What was the Republic of Letters?" by Dirk van Miert;
Zhou, Jing. "Could World Literature be the Future of Comparative Literature?." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 19.5 (2017): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3112>;
The Aesthetics of Net Literature by Peter Gendolla, Jörgen Schäfer;
A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping and the Geo-Coded World by John Pickles;
The Written World: How Literature Shaped History by Martin Puchner;
World Bank Literature by Amitava Kumar (ed.);
"The Scale of World Literature" by Nirvana Tanoukhi;
"The World Turn’d Upside Down: Reflections on World Literature" by Rosinka Chaudhuri;
What constitutes world literature? Where does it begin and where does it end? What is its scope and limitations?
"Canon and World Literature" by Longxi Zhang;
"Our Place in the World: The Stories of Maps" by James Salzman;
Where is world literature located? Where is world literature in the world?
"Multilingual Locals and Significant Geographies: For a Ground-up and Located Approach to World Literature" by Karima Laachir, Sara Marzagora, Francesca Orsini;
"The Locations of (World) Literature: Perspectives from Africa and South Asia" by Francesca Orsini and Laetitia Zecchini;
World Literature and the Postcolonial: Narratives of (Neo) Colonization in a Globalized World by Elke Sturm-Trigonakis (ed.);
The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature by Pierre Bourideu;
What the location of world literature?
The Location of World Literature by G Tihanov;
India and World Literature by Salman Rushdie;
Tagore, Rabindranath. "Visva Sahitya." Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century. D. Banerji (ed.). Translated by Rijula Das and Makarand R. Paranjape. India: Springer, 2015. DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-2038-1;
Zhang, Yingjin. "Mapping Chinese Literature as World Literature." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 17.1 (2015): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2714>;
National literatures as world literature?
“The Changing Contours of a National Literature” by Carole Gerson;
"World Literature, National Contexts" by David Damrosch;
"World literature and national literature(s)" by Jing Tsu;
"National Literature, World Literatures, and Universality in Romanian Cultural Criticism 1867-1947" by Andrei Terian;
"Introduction to World Literature 1920 to the Early Twenty‐First Century" by B. Venkat Mani;
"World literature, global culture and contemporary Chinese literature in translation" by Bonnie S. McDougall;
"Translation and world literature" by Jianghua Qin;
"Translation and World Literature" by Supriya Chaudhuri;
"Literary Fortresses: Translation and “World Literature” in Y. H. Brenner's Beyond the Borders and “From the World of Our Literature”" by Danielle Drori;
"World Literature in Translation: A Threat to the Sovereignty of the Original?" by Anouar El Younssi;
"Translation and World Literature" @ World Literature Today;
"On World Literature and Translation" by Fritz Strich;
"World literature, translation, untranslatability" by Shaobo Xie;
"World literature and translation studies" by Lawrence Venuti;
"Goethe's World Literature Paradigm: From Uneasy Cosmopolitanism to Literary Modernism" by John D. Pizer;
Translation and the Future of Early World Literature by Susan E. Hrach;
"World Literature and Literary Value: Is “Global” The New “Lowbrow?”" by Karolina Watroba;
How many world literatures does the world have?
Comparative literature or world literature- which came first? (chicken and egg question)
Chinese Literature as World Literature by Wang Ning;
How to make sense of the numerous series on world literatures: Bloomsbury, Cambridge, Oxford, London Review, Seagull, Wordsworth?
"Bibliomigrancy: book series and the making of world literature" by B. Venkat Mani;
What is thematology? How can it help in mapping world literatures?
"Revisiting Thematology: Importance of Studying “Themes as a Method” in Comparative Literature" by Koel Mitra;
How is world literature related to translation?
Can themes be translated?
What are the ways in which themes can be mapped? What is such method/s and methodology/ies?
What factors go into the making cross-cultural, cross-boundary, cross-spatial and cross-temporal themes? How are they identified and inducted into the so far unintelligible corpora of world literatures?
What role does translation play in the making/unmaking of world literatures? Where does the locus of power lie in translating literary works in the English language and what goes into the politics of translation?
How does transcreation affect world litertaure and its themes?
Does transmogrification play into the thematic crossing over of spatial. cultural, temporal, historical, geographical and chronological boundaries? If it does, how? If not, why?
Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters translated by J. Lennart Berggren and Alexander Jones;
Translation and Geography by Federico Italiano;
"Literary Criticism for Places" by Eric L. Ball;
What are the limits of translation, comparative and world literature? Where are the margins?
"A course in World Literature will be more effective than any single literature in securing for the reader "the aims of literary culture"." (pp. 16)
Source: The Unity of World Literature and Indian Literature by Vinayak Krishna Gokak. S. Nijalingappa Endowment Lectures delivered at the Bangalore University, Bangalore. 1976.
Where is world literature today in relation to translation and comparative literature?
How are geography and literature related?
John Dewey's metaphysical ground-map and its implications for geographic inquiry by Malcolm Cutchin;
Literary Criticism for Places by Eric L. Ball;