Other People's Heroes

Overview & Synopsis

Given the remit of addressing the potential of “worlded” comparative literature, I raise here two principal questions. First, the importance of history in reading intertexts, or the historicity of the reception of texts (a reception which isoften shielded by a penumbra of ignorance from those for whom the text was “intended” or from those who are the object of interest of a particular text), for in the shade of parallel but distinct trajectories of history yet further meaning is produced. Texts discussed include the poetry of Byron in the context of its reception in China, the Chinese ballad Mulan, and its détournement by Disney. The second reflection is on the nature of the impact of the “global” on literary and cultural studies, and on the meaning of global or world cultural production; a consideration of this seemingly new “worldly” culture also obliging us to invoke the historicity of this concept. In discussing these two areas, I tangentially seek to broach my discomfort with the metaphors with which we imagine and write literary and cultural studies.