The marketing of world literature today is marked by the larger migration of literary culture to ... more The marketing of world literature today is marked by the larger migration of literary culture to Web 2.0. This has gone hand in hand with a reconsignment of influence of orthodox authorities, from established reviewing organs to awards, to the amateur readers congregating on social media platforms, first and foremost on Goodreads, the world’s largest online community for circulating literary recommendations and socialization. The present paper traces this reconsignment of influence by examining the engagement of the Goodreads community with the works that were awarded the Booker Prize or the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction between 2015 and 2019, looking at reader reviews as well as the discussions ensuing from those reviews. As such, the reconsignment of influence is concluded to be regulated by the algorithmic rules of Goodreads and its proprietary platform, Amazon.com.
As American publishing conglomerates and institutions have come to play an increasingly dominant ... more As American publishing conglomerates and institutions have come to play an increasingly dominant role in world literature, dominant critical discourses tend to equate the “Americanization” of world literature with a process of aesthetic diminishment and devernacularization. This essay nuances and complements such accounts by focusing on the role of American independent publishers as curators of world literature. The “world literary vernacular” through which these presses construct world literary value contains five key elements: an insistence on modernist literary genealogies; an emphasis on regional (or at least subnational) attachments; an investment in oeuvres rather than in individual works or personal charisma as salient units of literary value; a decidedly unironic rhetoric that connects literature to a putative world republic of letters; and finally an emphasis on translatedness and the creative values of translation. The essay situates independent publishers as crucial parti...
The marketing of world literature today is marked by the larger migration of literary culture to ... more The marketing of world literature today is marked by the larger migration of literary culture to Web 2.0. This has gone hand in hand with a reconsignment of influence of orthodox authorities, from established reviewing organs to awards, to the amateur readers congregating on social media platforms, first and foremost on Goodreads, the world’s largest online community for circulating literary recommendations and socialization. The present paper traces this reconsignment of influence by examining the engagement of the Goodreads community with the works that were awarded the Booker Prize or the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction between 2015 and 2019, looking at reader reviews as well as the discussions ensuing from those reviews. As such, the reconsignment of influence is concluded to be regulated by the algorithmic rules of Goodreads and its proprietary platform, Amazon.com.
As American publishing conglomerates and institutions have come to play an increasingly dominant ... more As American publishing conglomerates and institutions have come to play an increasingly dominant role in world literature, dominant critical discourses tend to equate the “Americanization” of world literature with a process of aesthetic diminishment and devernacularization. This essay nuances and complements such accounts by focusing on the role of American independent publishers as curators of world literature. The “world literary vernacular” through which these presses construct world literary value contains five key elements: an insistence on modernist literary genealogies; an emphasis on regional (or at least subnational) attachments; an investment in oeuvres rather than in individual works or personal charisma as salient units of literary value; a decidedly unironic rhetoric that connects literature to a putative world republic of letters; and finally an emphasis on translatedness and the creative values of translation. The essay situates independent publishers as crucial parti...
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Papers by Amélie Hurkens