Marian Małowist’s world history and its application to world literature

Polish historian Marian Malowist was cited by Immanuel Wallerstein as his main inspiration and a founding father of world-system theory. This chapter focuses on some of Malowist's ideas, mainly those related to non-European worlds and to the basic ideas of world-systems theory which eventually inspired early perspectives in world history. Malowist's works, appearing in the 1950s and also posthumously published in the 1990s, have much in common with the perspectives of postcolonial theory and world-systems theories. Moreover, a selection of Malowist's essays is available in English and can therefore be used in world history and world literature as well. Unquestionably, the most divergent conceptualisation of world literature comes from David Damrosch with his claim that world literature is "a mode of circulation and of reading". For Malowist, using information mediated by core language sources is analogous to using translations in the world literature paradigm

Ancient history · World history · Central European Literary Studies · History · Language and Culture · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies

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