Abstract
This essay investigates how Zheng Zhenduo (郑振铎 1898–1958) developed a theory of world literature in response to threats to China both politically from without and culturally from within. Centered on an analysis of his 1922 article “A View on the Unification of Literature” (Wenxue de tongyiguan 文學的統一觀), the essay argues that although Zheng believed like many of his contemporaries in the transformative effects of reading world literature in translation, that does not constitute the entirety of his theorization of world literature. Instead, he accepted the first-move advantage of other national literatures in defining both world literary standards and literature itself, and used those definitions to redefine Chinese literature as a constituent of world literature. After a brief overview of Zheng and his moment, this essay attempts to extract his theory of world literature from the 1922 article. It then seeks to illustrate that theory in practice by examining his scholarship and translations, and concludes with a recent translation controversy that demonstrates the effects of Zheng’s own first-move advantage in Chinese conceptions of world literature.
Alt Text Acknowledgement
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Recommended Citation
Dooghan, Daniel M
"Zheng Zhenduo and the Problem of Priority in World Literature."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
27.3
(2025):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.5290>
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