You are cordially invited to a talk by Dr. Mehmet Yıldız, hosted by the Department of English Language and Literature and the Program in Cultures, Civilization, and Ideas.
Date: Monday, March 24, 2025; 17:30 (Reception starts at 17:00)
Room: H 232
Title: “Lost in Imagination: Reality Principle and World Literature”
Abstract: A fundamental question within the debate surrounding the contemporary notion of world literature concerns the possible misappropriation of texts in foreign contexts. In this talk, I trace such a concern to a commitment towards the reality principle, i.e. the idea that fictional worlds are “as much like the real one as the core of primary fictional truths permits” (Walton 1990:144). More precisely, I argue that world literature should be understood as a mode of reading in which the reality principle is suspended. That the notion of world literature requires one to detach fictional worlds from the real world, however, brings about a cost that is difficult to ignore. For not only does such a mode of reading negate the manifold ways in which the reality principle serves as a foundation for interpretation but also invalidates any attempt that aims to historicize the act of interpretation irrespective of the path taken (i.e. that of the object or the subject). Nonetheless, to the extent that world literature requires the reader to adopt an agential attitude towards the construction of fictional worlds, it also serves as a reminder of the contingency of reality and acts as a disruptive force against the totalizing tendencies of the Enlightenment. This talk explores the promise of such a force through a set of case studies that primarily focus on J.R.R. Tolkien, Jorge Luis Borges, and W.G. Sebald.
Biographical note: Dr. Mehmet Yıldız holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, where his dissertation “Correlative Object Ontology: Pragmatism and the Objects of Interpretation” traces the influence of logical positivism upon contemporary literary scholarship and explores the possibility of a theory that intertwines ontology, epistemology and ethics. He currently serves as a managing editor of the Journal of World Literature, and his recent work focuses on world literature and the semantics of fiction within the context of the 20th-century European novel.