As scholars remind us, translation, like literary theory, underwrites “our cultural transactions in this multifaceted, globalized world’, yet both remain to some extent, transient modes of understanding. Indeed, when literary theories travel from place to place, they sometimes take on different meanings. For the literary scholar, Edward Said, theories are not just transplanted into new settings, but "transformed by its new uses, its position in a new time & place”; while for the Argentinian author, Jorge Luis Borges, such changes are never fundamental: “I do not write, I rewrite... We are the heirs of millions of scribes who have already written down all that is essential.”

This course explores the ways in which world literary theory navigates between these two positions: are literatures, & the theories by which we understand them, made anew in different cultural contexts, or is there a more stable language of literatures we already share? Moving from formative statements of world literature as a discipline, and reading literary test cases though a series of theoretical outlooks, our classroom conversations will address how notions of the transient come together in language, theory, & fiction.