Introduction

The introduction to this dossier situates the concept of world literature as potentially challenging and intellectually productive, on the one hand, and susceptible to easy commodification, on the other. It argues for an incontrovertible link between the Orientalist philological revolution and the emergence of world literature, and situates a number of studies in the dossier as concerned with this link. Finally, it presents Erich Auerbach and Edward Said as contributors to a potential radicalization of the philology of world literature, replacing its organicist-nationalist assumptions with exilic ones.