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Le Dai

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, a key academic paradigm in Western scholarship has been to approach literary research with the conceptual framework of world literature, while world literature may be viewed as the global market of the global literary system. However, the core-periphery model — widely adopted in world literature studies, tends to oversimplify the field and fails to accurately reflect its complexities. In reality, multiple regional literary markets exist within the global literary market. These regional markets, or semi-peripheral zones, serve a crucial role in mediating between the European and American cores and the broader peripheries. The two semi-peripheral regions most closely linked to China are East Asia and the Eastern Bloc. In the twentieth century, China's narrative of world literature began with an East Asian perspective, mediated through Japan, before gradually shifting toward the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe, with the Soviet Union becoming central by the 1950s. China, situated in East Asia, exerts a unique and irreplaceable influence on the cultural and literary dynamics of the region. A more pragmatic and sustainable strategy for China is to shape the world literary system by fostering the development of an East Asian cultural community and literary market. This approach would lay the foundation for a differentiated narrative of world literature. In the post-decentering era, China can leverage the semi-peripheries of East Asian literature to challenge the dominance of the Western core and contribute to a more balanced global literary map.

Keywords

global literary market, semi-peripheries, East Asia, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, shaping world literature, Chinese strategy

First Page

76

Last Page

86

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