Heralded Heroes

Abstract

World literature studies is the most open field of all. In principle, it excludes nothing and no one. Things become interesting, however, when certain heroes emerge. In this article, I discuss two major influences on Pascale Casanova’s work which gave it a very distinctive position and generated new challenges. The adaptation of the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu in Casanova’s probes to what extent a theory developed to describe a predominantly national frame of reference could be transferred to the international domain. Casanova’s return to the question of the nation in her last work underlines the challenge of applying field theory in a world literature context. Casanova’s two monographs devoted to a single author, Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka, respectively, are symptomatic for a particular kind of author in her critical work: the writer working from the semi-periphery in a way that makes a deep impact in the center.