Literariness as Interliterariness, Cosmopolitan “Author” and “Interpreter”

Abstract

The “name” of the discipline of comparative literature denotes the basic methodological perspective of “comparison”, which presupposes a relation between at least two (literary) phenomena and, in terms of network structure, also network-multiplied relations as interactions among temporary (hybrid) identities. The discipline’s “name” thus implies its ability to reflect its own dialogue stance as a meta-principle of comparative literature (Culler): it exchanges narratives about the literary in dialogue “narrative” situations. These multiply in direct proportion to the globalized “reduction” of the world, thereby establishing an opposition to globalism – that is, cosmopolitanism. – Due to its long predominance in comparative literature, the Western approach to cosmopolitan literariness, including Goethe’s concept of “world literature”, was criticized as an imperialistic concept. Judging from studies of Goethe’s descriptions of “world literature”, all of these descriptions do not seek to invalidate (non-Western) otherness; however, they by all means present the starting point of the Western access or opening up to (dialogue) cosmopolitanism. – A more modern dialogue-oriented method of comparative literature is “interliterariness”. Despite the “aesthetic shift” in historiography, one cannot identify the literary-historiographic and literary text; however, in their (dialogue) identification of interliterariness, literary historians can to a certain extent approach the model of literary dialogism through Booth’s concept of the “implied author”, which is to define the “rhetoric of fiction”. By following the dialogism of a literary text, to which this refers, the “implied author” – or, in this case, “implied interpreter” – can function as a symbolic legitimacy of contemporary (and also intercultural) dialogue ethics, which literary discourse effectively opens through its ability to present/comprehend “otherness”. Interliterariness and the literary-historical perspective of interliterariness can be manifested in Vladimir Bartol’s “Persian” novel Alamut and its interpretations in literary history.