The multiple and the diverse. Prolegomena to a theory of world literature

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24197/h62gg437

Keywords:

comparative literature, interliterary theory, ectopic literatura, cultural globalization, polysystmes, world literature

Abstract

For a long time, academic disdain for comparative literature, or comparativism, stemmed from the same reason why the canon of other literatures was disregarded within the fields of national literatures studies. This article proposes a critical review of comparative literature throughout its history and a subsequent theoretical exploration of what it means today, in the cultural context of globalization, to speak of comparative literature, general literature, or world literature. This is an era, as the article examines, in which comparative literature can perhaps only be understood as a problem, and world literature as one of its possible solutions.

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Author Biography

  • Juan Francisco Ferré, University of Malaga

    PhD in Hispanic Studies and Full Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Málaga (UMA), with two six-year research periods recognized by the ANECA (2009-2021). Between 2005 and 2012, he was a visiting professor at Brown University (United States), teaching Spanish and Latin American narrative, film, and literature. In 2006, his doctoral thesis ("Allegories of Postmodernity: Juan Goytisolo's Terminal Novel") received the highest possible grade from the examining board (summa cum laude, unanimously) chaired by the distinguished Claudio Guillén. From May 1, 2009, to April 30, 2011, I held a MICINN postdoctoral fellowship managed by FECYT and carried out at Brown University as an R&D project (“Transatlantic Hypertextuality: Contemporary Narrative and New Technologies”). Since 2018, I have been a member of the Department of Spanish Philology at the University of Málaga (UMA), in the Area of ​​Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literature in the East Asian Studies degree program. In 2022, I published the monograph “Yin and Yang: The Power of Eros in the Literatures of East and West” (editorial Comares), a collection of essays on Asian, European, and Hispanic literatures.

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Published

2026-07-22

Issue

No. 17 (2026)

Section

ARTICLES

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Copyright (c) 2026 Juan Francisco Ferré

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How to Cite

The multiple and the diverse. Prolegomena to a theory of world literature. (2026). Castilla. Estudios De Literatura, 17, 184-213. https://doi.org/10.24197/h62gg437