Transnationalism and Translation in Modern Chinese, English, French and Japanese Literatures

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"The fact of the unity and diversity of cultural worlds makes humanistic scholarship infinite. But deep differences impede understanding, maybe even sympathy. Ryan Johnson calls his way through this obstacle an intentional 'vagueness', a term too modest to reflect the careful analyses and brilliant conjectures that bring his choice of French, Chinese, Japanese and English works into a closer conversation." - Haun Saussy, University Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Chicago Ryan Johnson''s _Transnationalism and Translation in Modern Chinese, English, French and Japanese Literatures_ is an important scholarly contribution to comparative literature, world literature and translation studies. It provides us with fascinating critiques of theoretical issues and exciting comparative analyses of individual works." - Akitoshi Nagahata, Professor of English and American Literature, Nagoya University "This bracing and illuminating study reanimates literary minds and worlds between East and West. Johnson's conceptual nimbleness - from ontologies of vagueness to the force of weak theory - permits a fresh exploration of the intrigue of imprecision, moving through a remarkable set of collaborations and adaptations to comprehend the contradictions and boundaries of world literature." - Josephine Nock-Hee Park, Professor of English and Asian American Studies, University of Pennsylvania Johnson's book undertakes a challenge of transforming the mostly sociological and quantitative concept of world literature into poetics, literary theory, and the methodology of reading by a surprising move: turning the concept's very limitations, its vagueness and weakness, into an actual philosophical basis of aesthetic and epistemological inquiry. -- Olga V. Solovieva, Critical Inquiry (June 2021)