Resisting World Literature

This article examines the historical tensions between the theoretical definitions of “world literature” and the institutionalization of world literature programs in the context of early Cold War literary criticism in the United States. It uses the works of René Wellek, Austin Warren, and Lionel Trilling to establish that this type of criticism resisted the rise of world literature based on the theoretical claim that world literature does not exist as a legitimate object of literary analysis. In its conclusion, the article turns to Gayatri Spivak’s critique of world literature to demonstrate that the resistance to world literature is part of the ongoing history of Weltliteratur well beyond the Cold War.