The Proletarian Moment in World Literature

During the interwar period (1918–1939), an international literary movement emerged in relation to internationalist and socialist politics and political struggles. Writers around the world saw themselves as contributors to a new proletarian moment within the historical unfolding of world literature. This movement was international, and writers situated on the peripheries of both the capitalist core and the emerging socialist world looked toward revolutionary Russia and other centers of the socialist world. This paper focuses on three such authors, the American Richard Wright, the Argentinian Roberto Arlt, and the Icelander Halldór Laxness. During the interwar period, all three were involved in local communist and socialist politics and belonged to the respective literary scenes surrounding such politics. However, the post-1945 reception history of these authors is characterized by narratives that see them distanced and even divorced from interwar literary radicalism. It is as such that each author has played a crucial role in the formation of national or regional literary traditions. Valorizing the fact that these writers were situated peripherally vis-à-vis both the cultural center of the Second World in Moscow and the core locations of Western hegemony, the article charts their movement from writing politically committed literature during the interwar period toward possessing a privileged place within their respective national or regional literary traditions during the postwar period

Communism · Interwar period · Narrative · Politics · Proletariat · Situated · Socialism · World literature · World War II · Comparative and World Literature · Cultural History and Identity Formation · Translation Studies and Practices