Myth, history and literature: Reading Ismail Kadare’s “Essays on World Literature” through Giorgio Agamben’s “The Coming Community”

Rok, strany: 2020, 20 - 34

The work of Albania’s best-known writer, Ismail Kadare, is focused on his native country’s culture, history and traditions, but has been paralleled by his equal concern with world literature. This has provided him not only with a cultural framework for comparison and analysis, but also with an effective means to render historical processes throughout artistic expression. The collection translated into English as Essays on World Literature: Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare (2018) mediates the readers’ imaginary voyage to ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan England and communist Albania. Using a theoretical approach inspired by The Coming Community (1993) by philosopher Giorgio Agamben (with whom Kadare received the 2018 Nonino Prize), this article discusses Kadare’s essays focusing on Albania’s European identity, supported by the inextricable links between myth, literature and history.

ISO 690:

Raducanu, A. 2020. Myth, history and literature: Reading Ismail Kadare’s “Essays on World Literature” through Giorgio Agamben’s “The Coming Community”. In World Literature Studies, vol. 12, no.4, pp. 20-34. 1337-9275.

APA:

Raducanu, A. (2020). Myth, history and literature: Reading Ismail Kadare’s “Essays on World Literature” through Giorgio Agamben’s “The Coming Community”. World Literature Studies, 12(4), 20-34. 1337-9275.

Vydavateľ: Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV