Tagore’s Concept of World Literature: A Comparatist Genealogy

In a talk he gave in 1907, five years before he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore famously said: “In Bangla I shall call it Visva Sahitya (World Literature).” What are the afterlives of this statement in the history of comparative literature? What role does translation play here? In what relation is Tagore’s concept of world literature to other comparatist genealogies? How did Tagore conceive of world literature in relation to his own work, for example The Home and the World?

Recommended reading for the workshop: Tagore’s “Visva Sahitya” and the introduction to Bhavya Tiwari’s Beyond English: World Literature and India. 

About the speaker

Bhavya Tiwari’s research engages with comparative literature, world literature and translation studies. In 2022, her book, Beyond English: World Literature and India (2021), was awarded the Honorable Mention for the Harry Levin Prize, given by the American Comparative Literature Association. In Beyond English, Tiwari radically alters the debates on world literature that hinge on the model of circulation and global capital by deeply engaging with the idea of the world and world-making in South Asia.

This event is organized by the Global Comparative Humanities Working Group, based in the Center for the Humanities and funded by an Arts & Sciences SPEED Grant.