English Department

Odd Semester 2020

Universitas Negeri Semarang
Course Description
This course is designed to present the knowledge and skills
about world literature differing from non-Western literary
works reflected on people’s social life and culture in order
to enable students to explain their knowledge of world
literature and its characteristics, interpret World literary
works through reading skill development, and implement
their language literacy in general, to write an essay of short
practical criticisms including structural, semiotic, and
sociological analytical reading, and to develop
internalization of cultural conservation concerning on
humane, aware, and tolerant values and applying accuracy
on content aspects and linguistic features in post-
intermediate English acquisition.
Learning Objectives
The students are expected to be able:
1.to explain their knowledge of world literature and its
characteristics, interpret World literary works through reading
skill development, and implement their language literacy in
general (KCL, GSCL);
2.to write an essay of short practical criticisms including
structural, semiotic, and sociological analytical reading (SSC,
GSCL, SSCL);
3.to develop internalization of cultural conservation
concerning on humane, aware, and tolerant values and
applying accuracy on content aspects and linguistic features
in post-intermediate English acquisition (ALC).
Introduction to World Literature
The term ‘world literature’ suggest a collection of
literary works that were produced by authors from
different countries over the world.
This means that the literary works exist in their
respective languages or mother tongues. For instance,
an epic about Trojan war entitled The Iliad by a Greek
poet, Homer was originally written in Greek. Classic
Greek plays such as Antigone by Sophocles, Medea by
Euripides were similarly written in Greek; The Aeneid
by Virgil was firstly written in Latin (Mack, et. al., 1979).
Introduction to World Literature
Not to mention other literary works from other
countries such as The Divine Comedy by Dante
Alighieri that was written in Italian, Don Quixote by
Miguel de Cervantes in French (ibid., 1979), The
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in Russian, In a
Bamboo Grove by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in Japanese
(Puchner, et. al., 2012).
But all these works became ‘world literature’ since
they were translated into English, as the mostly used
foreign language, so more people could read them.
Introduction to World Literature
Accordingly, those foreign works as world literature
can evoke imagination of readers from different
cultural backgrounds and countries.
This is all made possible by the act of translating
those works from their original languages into English
as the first world language.
Translation here serves as “re-creations of works for
new readers” (Puchner, et. al., 2012, xvll).
This also means that those works in fact reflect
culture and tradition of each country and continent.
Introduction to World Literature
For some individuals, world literature suggest exotic
literature written by authors in countries outside the West.
But for some others, world literature means “a universal
canon of masterpieces.”
But for most people, world literature constitutes diverse
works that ‘travel from one place to another’ in new places
and languages.
World literature evokes one to ponder that the works
emerge from “an unequal world-system” consisting of
“highly developed civilization” and “underdeveloped ones”
(Etherington & Zimbler 2018).
Introduction to World Literature
The term ‘world literature’ suggests “the verbal arts of
the human domain as a whole”. The domain certainly
refers to human rather than nonhuman animals in
terms of its spatial and temporal concept.
This mostly points toward “humanity’s experience of
the here and now, rather than the far and distant”.
This corresponds with the same term of other
languages, welt (German), wereld (Dutch), värld
(Swedish), verden (Danish) that suggest the phrase
‘age of man’ (Etherington & Zimbler 2018).
Introduction to World Literature
The meaning of the term also includes other aspects,
such as “the material world; humanity’s present,
temporal state of existence; earthly things, or
temporal possessions; an age; a person’s conditions of
life; the course of human affairs.”
In Old English, these aspects relate to Aelfric’s
weorold-cræft, or a secular art; Bede’s weoruld-
gewritu, which means ‘secular or profane literature’.
In Modern English, this sense is analogous with the
adjective ‘worldly’ (Etherington & Zimbler 2018).
Introduction to World Literature
The term ‘world literature’ often also refers to ‘a
shorthand for literature and globalization studies’.
In this contemporary era, the term ‘world literature’
includes other disciplines such as comparative literary
sociology, translation studies, digital humanities.
What the term addresses is the notion of literary
totality or ‘the dynamic relationship between parts and
whole, the active configuration of every particular at
any given point—the totality of verbal art or the world
literature itself (Etherington & Zimbler 2018).
Introduction to World Literature
The ‘verbal art’ is ‘expansive’ and “points beyond the
printed text and received notions of what counts as
properly ‘literary’, but also restrictive, insofar as it
connotes works that are subjected to judgements of
quality” .
One efficient way to examine any given theory of world
literature is to ask how the theory deals with “the
discrete elements of literary totality; the nature of the
movement and interaction of these elements; the
composite whole that these elements constitute, as well
as the temporal logic they assume” (ibid., 2018).
References:
Etherington, Ben & Jarad Zimbler. Eds. “Introduction.” The
Cambridge Companion to World Literature . Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2018. Kindle Book.
Mack, Maynard, Bernard M. W. Knox, John C. McGalliard, P. M.
Pasinetti, Howard E. Hugo, René Wellek, Kenneth Douglas, Sarah
Lawall, eds. The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces . 4th ed.
Volume 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,1979. Print.
Puchner, Martin, Suzanne Akbari, Wiebke Dececke, Vinay
Dharwadker, Barbara Fuchs, Caroline Levine, Pericles Lewis, Emily
Wilson. Eds. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd ed.
Volume F. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012. Print.