In the critical discourse of the field’s most reputed researchers, the vantage point on the “nation” has shifted from a tendency towards studying it within strictly defined geographical boundaries (and implicitly within ethnic and racial categories) to the concession of isolating networks of transcultural phenomena, territorial crossings or multilingual interferences. As a consequence, literary histories themselves could no longer be shaped after the ethnocentric model of “epical synthesis” fuelled by 19^th century values and worldviews. Historiographical approaches aimed at establishing national narratives about canonical authors, about referential historical data, about the most representative literary movements or – in the case of so-called “semi-peripheric” cultures – about the intersections and synchronisations with “great” and “central” cultures have been replaced by theoretical standpoints built upon debating cultural confluences, intersections and hybridizations, precisely those phenomena that eschew inquiry within the confines of a single ethnic space.
Since the early 2000s, the reconfiguration of literary history beyond the nation has not only generated intense debate, but has also prompted far-reaching research projects, of which transnational literary histories with regional focus (addressing Latin America, the Iberic Peninsula and Central and Eastern Europe, respectively) have proven the most prolific. At the same time, the national literary systems’ presumed homogeneity has been dismantled during recent years by the Bloomsbury Academic series Literatures as World Literatures, coordinated by Thomas O. Beebee. This collection, which has hosted extensive studies on world literatures (German, Brazilian, Danish, Dutch, Romanian and American, among others), has not only led to new variations in the field of comparative literature, but also to viable approaches to contemporary literary history. Among the major aims of these studies were the rehabilitation of a broad array of phenomena, directions and literary instruments previously neglected or downright rejected by literary historiography: literatures written by ethnic minorities, by exiled or diasporic authors, literatures preceding the nation-state in its current understanding, literatures that refuse any sort of national classification, circuits of translation and export, the profoundly heterogenous phenomena of global literature, etc.

Histoires littéraires alternatives / Alternative scenarios to national literary histories

Transgressions de l’histoire littéraire nationale / Transgressions of national literary historiography

Figures de la nation / Avatars of national narratives

Comptes rendus / Book Reviews

Contributeurs / Contributors / 199