A Conversation with Dante on Divine Comedy: Collage Metaphor in Representing World Literature

Document Type : Original Research

Author
Mohammad-Javad Haj'jari
Assistant Professor of English Literature, Razi University, Kermanshah
Abstract
What is introduced to readers around the world as “world literature” by scholars and critics is rather an anthology of writers and their works from other countries than an equal opportunity for all nations to have the world listen to their literature without socio-political preferences. This selective approach in introducing “world literature”, mostly practiced by the West to maintain its position, resembles in essence the application of collage in conversation pieces, in a way that creating and developing “world literature” in different times could be paralleled with a collage piece so that this art acts as a metaphor for “world literature”. This study, interdisciplinary in approach, investigating the themes and techniques of collage in “A Conversation with Dante on Divine Comedy,” as a conversation piece, peers into its selection of certain literary figures in light of Bakhtin’s “carnival” and Franco Moretti’s “distant reading” to shed light on the role of critics, scholars, professors, translators, and publishers in making up “world literature”.

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