Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures problematizes and develops the notion of the vernacular. Understood in the linguistic sense as well as an element of the local, the vernacular facilitates the exploration of local and global dynamics. By showing how the active role of the local, the indigenous and the periphery in international literary exchanges has yet to be critically examined, this volume argues that a coherent theorization of the vernacular will enable us to do so.

The essays in the volume present new critical approaches in the debate on world literature, which has given priority to cosmopolitan movements, global circulation of literatures, and metropolitan centers. In 9 case studies, approaching narratives from the long 20th century from more or less marginal contexts-such as the Francophone Chinese diaspora, Catalan and Basque regions in Spain, and the Antilles-the volume offers theoretical and methodological ways of putting the concept of the vernacular in practice and demonstrates how vernaculars operate within different literary, critical, cultural, and political circumstances.