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"The world is not enough". Literary Encounters with the Vanishing Planet

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

The article is part of a thematic issue of the journal "Revue des sciences humaines" entitled "Refaire monde" and devoted to the idea of "world" in contemporary philosophical and literary debates. In the first part, the article identifies the three main areas of contemporary literary theory in which a reflection on the notion of the world is articulated today: studies on world literature, the debate on the return of "reality" and "realism", and finally the reflections on the mobility of the borders between fiction and non-fiction. In a second step, the article examines these three debates in the light of the current ecological emergency, showing how most of the questions raised above undergo a significant change, even a critical reversal. Finally, the article shows the limits of the notion of the world to account for the most pressing contemporary problems and indicates a possible direction for the planet to become an operational concept in comparative literature studies without losing sight of the global and worldwide dimension.

((Instead of my family name Mengozzi, there is an error in Scopus and I am listed as McNgozzi (Scopus EID 2-s2.0-85141326596). I have contacted the journal asking them to fix the problem. I am waiting for a response.))