Cosmopolitanism, World Literature and Chinese Literary Practice

Abstract

In the present essay, the author first dates the origin of cosmopolitanism,one of the cutting edge theoretic topics in current international academia, in comparison with its practice in China and the West, and offers his own reconstruction of this controversial concept. The term “cosmopolitanism” is made up by two parts: cosmos comes from the Greek word Kórμo‰, meaning the Universe, and polis comes from Póki‰,meaning city. The two parts put together forms a new word meaning world city or state. Those who believe in its moral standard are called “cosmopolites,” and their claim and theoretic doctrine is thus called “cosmopolitanism.”Then he deals with the internationalizing process of modern Chinese literature with regard to cosmopolitanism. To the author, from a literary point of view, in China’s recent past, to talk about cosmopolitanism was nothing but to identify Chinese literature with Western literature by translating as much Western literature as possible into Chinese. But now with the advent of globalization, the rapid development of Chinese economy,and Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize winning in Literature in 2012, it is the right time to internationalize Chinese literature. Therefore cosmopolitanism has once again become significant to China, its literature and culture.