[O]ne of the key achievements of Recoding World Literature [is] to have demonstrated how national debates, politics, and institutions shape world literature, both as an idea and as a practice. [...] Mani’s methodological reorientation toward publics that are organized around books and libraries enables him to chart new empirical territory for world literature studies.
Aamir Mufti, University of California, Los Angeles:
Recoding World Literature is a work of stunning scope. Drawing on archives across languages and countries, from Goethe to Pamuk, and taking seriously the well-known fact that world literature was in origin a German idea, Mani provides a fresh and alternative history of this now hegemonic concept. The discussion about world literature is about to undergo a definite reorientation.
This book is an indispensable addition to the libraries of not only world literature scholars, but also those interested in the circumstances that have shaped the developments of literary circulation in general and libraries in particular, whether these libraries are public domains, private collections, or digitally constituted.
Mani painstakingly reclaims the debate about world literature from university classrooms, moving away from abstract theories and philosophies to provide a compelling account of the lives of books. As literature continues to migrate through translation and onto digital platforms, Recoding World Literature provides a solid point of departure from which to chart the next stages of the story.
[Recoding World Literature] is not just a book about books, the physical objects, but it traces the global pathways of texts and translations in many formats, from papyrus to PDF. […] [The non-specialist reader] will be richly rewarded by a work that, while focused on Germany, is global in ambition and reach.
[O]ne of the most remarkable features of Mani’s book is its capacity to put the typically discrete discourses of world literature, print culture, and library science into intimate conversation. In expansively conceptualizing world literature as constructed by the processes of production, movement, and encoding, Mani offers a deeply nuanced portrayal of global networks of writing and readership. Such an effort not only represents a dramatic reframing of the enterprise of world literature but parses the occluded relations between readers, writers, states, and texts that other recent studies of world literature have failed to fully interrogate.
David Damrosch, Harvard University:
“Venkat Mani’s engrossing study of ‘bibliomigrancy’ makes an important contribution to studies of world literature and the politics of culture, probing the values—and the exclusions—encoded in libraries, translation series, and now the digital archive. Every bibliophile will want to add this sparkling and thought- provoking book to their personal library.”
The reader comes to appreciate what Mani emphasizes in his long introduction and throughout, which is “that world literature is historically conditioned, culturally determined, and politically charged,” but at the same time is a "shared cultural heritage of human beings. This is a fascinating and engaging study.
Leslie Adelson, Cornell University:
“This is a splendid, erudite, sophisticated, and eminently readable book that makes vital, original interventions in several interlocking fields in the humanities.”
...I certainly hope our future has more works such as this in it—rich and insightful histories of the theory and practice of world literature as embodied in specific national or linguistic traditions.
Open Access
