How National Literature Toward World Literature

In the current process of globalization, due to the increasing integration of the economy, in the deeper part of people's ideology, nationalism and statism have gradually given way to cosmopolitanism. A lot of wise people have produced a culture of the imminent "transnational", "go to the country" of a kind of confusion and anxiety. That is a kind of fear of the lack of a sense of cultural belonging in the future when culture is about to transcend the nation and leave the country. This mentality has given rise to a kind of reverse thinking, that is, an effort to emphasize more on ethnicity and national consciousness at present. Literature, as a representation of culture and as an externalization of psychology, will inevitably pay more attention to the contemporary construction and historical trends of national literature and state literature, and will be more longing and yearning for the world literature of "transnational" and "de-country". The task of comparative literature is precisely to study the connection and difference between these kinds of literatures in academic perspective, doctrinal paradigm and practical exploration. In this paper, we try to do some qualitative analysis on their definition from the perspective of ontology and epistemology, and do some explorations on their interrelationships, in order to clarify the general trend of national literature towards world literature.

I

Ethnicity is not ancient. If a nation is defined as a group of people who use the same language, adhere to an unbroken cultural tradition, and have the same interests, then the creation of nations is well documented. In the late Middle Ages in Europe, when humanism became more and more popular, and people's personal demands went beyond the family and clan into society, the demand for society became greater and greater, which required a boundary, and the nation naturally became the most suitable identity to set a limit. People's distribution of responsibilities and rights to society cannot be unlimited, and there must be a choice of objects and settings. This gave birth to the imagination of people's ethnicity and drove the division of people into ethnic groups. When the nation-state appeared in history, especially after France created the national flag and national anthem during the Revolution of 1789, the concept of the nation began to materialize, and a variety of image packages gave it many "textures", and gradually infiltrated people's sensory level to the depths of consciousness. It is generally believed that this is the beginning of the construction of a nation-state with a relatively independent and conscious consciousness. At this time, literature, as a kind of social ideology, when using a certain kind of language used and recognized by the same ethnic group to create an image, and used to reflect social life and express thoughts and feelings, this form of linguistic art expression took on the ontological characteristics of the national literature of the nascent period. Before the term "world literature" had its present meaning, national literature mainly referred to the written and oral works of the multi-ethnic countries that have preserved their own distinctive national cultural traditions, followed the same aesthetic standards, reflected the psychological structure of their own cultures, and were created in the national languages and scripts with their own national characteristics. These literatures, in spite of all their differences, have their own inheritance relations and cultural traditions once they are formed. The so-called tradition is in fact the sum of the literary and artistic views, artistic methods, artistic forms and artistic styles that have been gradually formed by each nation in the process of long-term historical development and have their own characteristics. It is embodied in the excellent works and theoretical writings of the nation.

Since then, the European social language, "nation" often appears with the "national" phenomenon of synonymy. The social history of Europe can almost be regarded as a history of national development. So much so that "United Nations" is actually written as "United Nations". It now seems that such a perception is incomplete. First of all, a nation is a political concept, a grouping of entities created as a result of political interests, and its existence is sustained by "national consciousness" and "national interests". Especially in the 21st century, when the global post-modern context has become more complex and volatile, how to resolve the impact of the aftermath of the global financial crisis, how to cope with the impact of the accelerating new scientific and technological revolutions, how to cushion the impact of the era of capital innovations and the new globalization, and how to solve the various perplexities confronting mankind, in a word, all of them require a strong national polity, an unswerving sense of nationhood, and a complete and long-term national interest. A strong national polity, an unwavering national consciousness, and a complete and long-term national interest. As a result, the "nation", a collective interest that has gradually been clearly strengthened, is increasingly defending its own image within the global system and trying to turn passive into active in the dialogue of ideas at the global level. With this clear purpose, the "value of the state" is increasingly being cultivated. It needs to critically extract the best and remove the dross in order to become a representative of its own zeitgeist and an important part of world culture. This is clearly incompatible with the nature of the nation. Secondly, since the Middle Ages in Europe, national consciousness has gradually awakened, and almost all ethnic groups using the same language and having the same culture and cultural and psychological structure have set up their own countries, which are less involved in the problem of multinational states and nations. As a result, the literature of the nation and the literature of the state, or national literature, have become essentially divergent. This divergence is less pronounced in countries composed of relatively homogeneous ethnic groups and more pronounced in multi-ethnic states. The reason is that national or country-specific literature is artificially divided into literatures for political and territorial considerations, on the basis of national consciousness and national interests, and is different from national literatures formed in the state of nature. In a multi-ethnic country, it is created by a unified language as the national language. In the sphere of comparative literature, since crossing national boundaries is involved in the ontology, this makes it clearly defined, and it would be ambiguous to say that it crosses national or so-called country boundaries. Therefore, in the field of comparative literature more talk about national literature than more talk about national literature seems to be a more precise concept, more scientific definition, but also more in line with the actual study of comparative literature and the norms of doctrine.

"Nation", as the name of a human social organization, has been used by people in many parts of the world, especially in the 16th century, when people in many areas colonized by the West awakened to the fact that "nation" is the banner under which people are calling for the development of a national culture. After the awakening of the people in many areas colonized by the West since the 16th century, they also called for the establishment of their own independent nation-states under the banner of "nation". With the tangible or intangible "legacies" left behind by historical and cultural traditions, such as bloodline, language, customs, religion, survival, and region, people strengthened the boundaries of ethnic survival. At this time, because of its social function of gathering public opinion and mobilizing resources, ethnic literature was sometimes confused with literature named after regions, and the scope of ethnic literature became more flexible. But the good times did not last long, especially in modern times when the ethnic literature of the newly established state was severely challenged. Analyzed from the doctrinal level of literary genesis, pure national literature, i.e. pure and simple national literature is almost non-existent in modern times. Analyzed from the idea of cultural pluralism, people also attempt to change the monolithic situation in which national literature reigns supreme by emphasizing the diversity of artistic expressions of different ethnic groups. In fact, the cultural exchanges and connections between ethnic groups, which have existed for a long time, have been extremely complex and powerful in the present age of globalization, with the counteraction of dissolving ethnicity, so that the new ethnic separation and integration have also formed a force that impacts on the "ethnicity". In the face of these challenges, national literature will inevitably face the various variants of national literature in the form of reorganization and strengthen the boundaries of its own extension and connotation.　Ethnic literature is a kind of literature with inherited relationship and unique historical tradition, that is, literature with its own inner cultural and psychological structure, which is connected to a certain spiritual tradition. All national literatures show the objective law of mutual influence, mutual promotion and ****same development in the process of formation and after formation. As Mr. Ji Xianlin said, "The cultural development of a nation can be roughly divided into three steps: first, based on the ****same psychological quality of the nation, it develops independently according to the gradually formed cultural characteristics. Secondly, the acceptance of foreign influences and cultural exchanges within a large cultural system; influences from outside the large cultural system sometimes penetrate. Third, to form a cultural mixture or confluence based on the culture of one's own people and supplemented by foreign cultures." "Literature is an important expression of culture, and the laws of literary development cannot be separated from those of culture. ...... Like cultural confluence, the mutual exchanges and influences of literature are extraordinarily complex. These three steps are just a broad outline." This characteristic of national literature is not only manifested in a multi-ethnic country, but also among the literatures of different countries and different nationalities, and is a universal phenomenon with regularity.

It is well known that the real challenge to national literature was the concept of "world literature" (weltliteraure) put forward by the German writer Goethe. He believed that literature, like art and science, belonged to the whole world, and hoped that people could break through the narrow world of national literature and focus on the vast world of literature of all countries in the world, and in the inheritance of traditions and mutual exchanges, make the national literature become a wealth that all mankind can enjoy. Following this, Marx and Engels also put forward the familiar idea of "world literature" in the ****Producer's Manifesto. In contrast to Goethe's purely literary understanding of world literature, Marx and Engels were referring to the entire range of spiritual products, including science, philosophy, history, literature and art. The concept of "world literature" has not only greatly broadened the scope of literary research, but also aroused a lot of heated discussions on its ontology, epistemology, methodology and other doctrinal aspects. Although nowadays "world literature" contains multiple meanings in the study of literature, the academic community is basically unanimous in considering the literature created by various national languages as different organisms and recognizing them as part of world literature. With this literature of the world, the overall aesthetic scale, in the investigation of specific literary phenomena, will not focus only on the specific local appearance, but will be the object of study as the world literature as an organism in a certain aspect, a region of the refractive point, then the regional national literature will have a real world significance.

Two

The term "world literature" is in a state of flux, both in terms of its connotation and its extension. From Goethe onwards, this flux has never stopped. This is a natural process, and an important symbol of the vitality and vigor of culture, including world literature, as it inevitably changes with the development of the economy and society. The world is now entering the era of globalization, with the intricate process of global economic integration and the moderating effect of the global institutional framework on cultural exchanges and conflicts, which makes people pay more attention to political, economic, social and cultural relations at the global level. With the advancement of science and technology and the development of transportation, with the ever-increasing world population, and with the frequent exchanges between various political, economic, and cultural aspects, people's hearts are consciously and unconsciously approaching each other, and although the physical distance between countries remains unchanged, the psychological distance is becoming smaller and smaller. Whether from the aesthetic point of view or from the cognitive point of view, people's expectations for world literature are growing day by day. People's expectation of world literature is no longer a longing to quench their thirst, but has gradually become a kind of spiritual longing and an ideological pursuit. In fact, every nation or country has its own unique national or state literature, and once they cross the boundaries of heterogeneous cultures, they will naturally become a part of world literature, only that national literature cannot disappear completely. Nowadays, when we discuss the construction of world literature from the theoretical level, we are trying to respond to the serious challenge of human demand for literature as a spiritual product brought about by globalization from a literary point of view.

The international nature of "world literature", which transcends national and state literature, is the result of people's attention to and study of world literature in the context of internationalization. This structural change in the study of literature from the nation and the state to the world is not only the expansion of the scope of study and the increase in the number of studies, but more importantly, the thinking of the international dimension. World literature and literary studies have begun to become a window for people of all nations and countries to recognize and understand the world, and have begun to become an important channel for them to communicate with each other, learn from each other, and appreciate each other. Entering the 21st century, this general trend is further developing both in breadth and depth. In short, people's acceptance of world literature depends mainly on their interest and willingness, i.e. the aesthetic value orientation of the recipients. Because they do not have *** the same linguistic, cultural and historical background, they need the recipients to take the initiative to mobilize and concentrate their own talents, common sense and aesthetic interests, and to form a relatively stable system of value judgments, so that world literature can produce real world significance among readers within the scope of a nation or a country. It is precisely for this reason that world literature has become a spiritual product with important connotative meaning and aesthetic value for people of all nationalities, countries and cultures in the world. Harvard scholar David Damrosch defines world literature as "a collection of literary works that have traveled through time and space and are widely popular in foreign lands far from their native contexts". The recipients of these works are readers who are able to transcend the original context of the work, and who can still widely recognize and interpret its aesthetic significance in foreign environments, and it is their efforts that have made world literature glow with the same alluring luster in foreign lands.

There is another important reason why "world literature" is now entering the field of literary research and reading with an unstoppable momentum, and that is the influence of the progress and development of modern science and technology represented by the Internet. First of all, due to the introduction of television and the popularization of photography technology, human beings began to enter the "age of reading pictures". It satisfies the needs of post-modern culture, that is, the public's visual pleasure. This kind of fast-food culture has made it very difficult for readers to sit still and read a work, including the classics of world literature. Many people tend to be immersed in enjoying world famous works adapted into movies and TV dramas, but it is difficult to read the original works in detail. The classics of world literature are being misinterpreted and misinterpreted as never before. The ease of reading not only greatly reduces people's reading time, but also reduces the heaviness of a cultural experience within people. The traditional way of seeking knowledge for passing down national literature and culture, shaping a sound personality and building a spiritual home is gradually being eroded in the era of map reading. The "text reading culture" with deep roots in traditional human culture is being increasingly infiltrated and dissolved by various kinds of popular "fast food culture". Originally the author is to see and understand the real events in real life combined into the expression of words and language, and the reader will be the meaning of the text or language and other information and then "restore" into "factual images", and then to a new understanding and awareness, during which the reader has to The reader is involved in the creative thinking process. This is a logical conversion process, that is, human recreation of imagination, image thinking process. If the reader becomes a viewer and omits this transformation process, and the "real event" is directly displayed on the image, the reader's function of deep participation in the transformation of information may be degraded, and lead to the weakening of creative thinking. This is not only a problem of reading world literature, but also a problem related to the development of human thinking and the continuation of material and spiritual civilization. Secondly, world literature, as an important aspect of global communication, has become an important part of what people read for entertainment and pleasure. Any personal, national, or state literary work, no matter how personalized it is, as long as it enters the Internet, it loses its privacy, and there is no reading boundary for the readers, as long as they know the original language of the work or the language of the translation, they can understand the literary nature of the work. So world literature continues to use the Internet and other new media technology to penetrate into people's daily lives with unprecedented speed and breadth, making any regional and individualized literature public and public ****ification. The Internet and other new technologies are different from any previous period of the material body of the media, it with its spontaneity, freedom, openness, openness, etc. for the formation of world literature and broadcasting to provide the best choice. But the Internet and other media are, after all, a "technology" and are themselves "neutral". "Technology" cannot solve the problem of image thinking, which is the core of world literature, and the "neutrality" of technology cannot solve the value judgment of world literature, not to mention that readers on the Internet read online, that is, reading on the Internet is to use the mouse to carry out a strong and fast browsing of the content in a longitudinal direction. It is difficult to read the content in depth, let alone read the text in detail. This kind of fast and time-saving reading is a good thing for the dissemination of world literature, but it is very difficult to make world literature become a classic because of its aesthetic value that transcends time and space, and will last for generations to come.　In addition to Goethe's proposal based on his realization of the universal law of literature, and Marx and Engels' view that it is a spiritual product that emerges as a result of the formation of the world market, "world literature" also has another meaning, which is related to those that have passed through the test of time and geography, have gained a world-wide reputation, and have an eternal value, and are capable of carrying the "supreme path" and "eternal value" of literature. The term "classics" is related to those "classics" that have passed the test of time and geography, have gained a worldwide reputation, and have an eternal value that can carry literature's "supreme principles" and "great doctrines". The so-called "classics" refer to those outstanding works of an era, a nation, or a form of literature that have been considered over a long period of time, and are generally recognized by their recipients as the most meaningful and valuable, with profound ideological and extensive cultural connotations. They are the deposits of history and culture, the crystallization of human spiritual products, with durability, exemplary and authoritative. Of course, as the ontological meaning of "classics", it has different meanings in different cultural contexts. Ancient Chinese classics refer to the exemplary Confucian scriptures, which were later expanded to cover the important texts of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Foreign classics generally refer to those excellent works that pass on the essence of literature, warn the world of life, and recognize society. They have been read endlessly, providing mankind with a treasure trove of life experiences and feelings and enriching people's spiritual life. These qualities of the classics give world literature a deep philosophical and rich cultural character. They start from rationality and explore the issues of life, philosophy, thought, state of being and other issues with strong discursive nature; they interpret those phenomena with cultural characteristics in material and spiritual products. This makes world literature worthy of its name and everlasting. World literature is like a huge reservoir of information with a huge memory, which can be y explored with the two sharp tools of philosophy and culture, and this is also the value of its eternal splendor. The classic quality also makes world literature show distinctive temporal and spatial characteristics and unique aesthetics. Literature is anthropology, a microcosm of life in various times and regions, which can make readers of different times and regions produce the sense of beauty of being in the same place and feeling the same feelings. In the process of aesthetizing world literature texts, readers, through presupposition, anticipation, pre-understanding and post-discovery, will develop a brand-new cognition of the aesthetic standards and aesthetic connotations therein, moving towards a kind of spiritual purification. The receiver can also continuously discover the hidden aesthetic value and enjoy the shocking artistic charm.

Looking at the globalization and integration of the world economy today, although national literature has its specific historical status and significance, the trend of historical development shows that it has a tendency to be gradually diluted, when the world literature needs to go beyond the ethnic attributes of the national literature, or else it will become a confrontation with the national literature. The national or state literature established by one ethnic group and one country, if it does not keep abreast of the times and transcend its limitations in time, then world literature will be difficult to raise.

Three

In essence, national literature is a kind of spiritual product which uses language and writing to express the social condition and psychological structure of the nation, and it is naturally formed by the national writers in their creative work, with more or less nationalistic tendency, whereas world literature is a kind of reflection of cosmopolitanism, and it is a classic among the spiritual products of mankind, and it has transcended the boundaries of the national language and other boundaries to become the common property and the **public* property of the various nations. It transcends the boundaries of national languages and becomes the common property and **** enjoyment of all peoples. At this time, literature finally got rid of "ethnicity" and became "cosmopolitan". This concept initiated by Goethe, through the development and deepening of Marx and Engels, is gradually moving towards the realization of all mankind's **** knowledge.

From national literature to world literature, there must be an intermediary and a bridge, a logical and theoretical connection, that is, comparative literature and overall literature. Analyzed in terms of nature, national literature, state literature or country literature, and world literature basically belong to the category of literature, only categorized differently. Comparative and general literature, on the other hand, is a study of literature that crosses the boundaries of nations or countries. It regards national and country-specific literature as the most basic material for research and as the starting point and direction of research, and world literature as the end point and goal of research, believing that it is the ****same wealth of the people of the world's various nationalities and countries, and is the product of the long-term exchanges and integration of the literatures of different nationalities or countries. As the famous French scholar of comparative literature, Aikinborough (also translated as Aitenborough), pointed out, "The first task of comparative scholars is to oppose all chauvinism and localism. They must finally realize that it is impossible to understand and appreciate human culture without a constant awareness of the exchanges that have taken place over thousands of years of human cultural values."

Comparative literature examines and researches the literatures of various nationalities and countries from an international perspective, utilizes the various research results of national or country literatures, and carries out comparative studies on different national and country literatures, in order to find out the basic laws that transcend the two and to make the two have many connections, forming a hybrid relationship between the two that is both yours and mine, so that such a study of literature can be more meaningful. This is the only way to make the study of literature more meaningful. In addition to comparative literature, there is also general literature, which is the needed theoretical transition between national literature and world literature. The so-called general literature, also known as general literature, was proposed by the French comparative writer Van Dijksen in his book On Comparative Literature (1931). Van Deegan believed that studies such as The European Romance Novel under the Influence of Richardson and Rousseau belonged to the category of general literature because it was neither a study of a particular writer or work in a particular country nor a study of the relationship between two writers' creations between the two countries, but rather a study of the laws of fiction creation in Europe in general within the same cultural tradition. Warren's book Theory of Literature (1942) revised and supplemented this concept. Nowadays, the term overall literature refers to the comprehensive and integrated study of regional literary phenomena in order to find out the laws with universality, that is, the study of those literary phenomena in a certain region or geographical area in the context of homogeneous cultural traditions that cross the boundaries of the country, nation or language. Even scholars as uninterested in comparative literature as the representative of Reception Theory, Yao Si, had to admit that "'world literature' replaces the basic differences between works and authors in different national literary contexts as the object of comparative literature". Although he thinks that this does not completely solve the methodological problem of comparative literature, he cannot help but admit that "world literature" has appeared "new rationality". Because world literature can not only incorporate into the scope of research the differences in the times of a work caused by the vertical time of history, but also incorporate into the scope of its own research the different perceptions of a work caused by the horizontal spatiality of nationalities, countries, and regions. The various research methods of comparative literature have contributed to this.

National and world literature is due to the intervention of comparative literature, more prominent in its theoretical significance, because it makes a strong national or regional characteristics of national or national literature across the heterogeneous cultural boundaries of the natural world literature, and show "transnational", It also shows the essential characteristics of "transnational" and "de-nationalization". However, the national literature that becomes world literature cannot lose its own national characteristics in a short time, even if the country is destroyed, the national character will still exist in the world literature, which is what is often said in the academic world that "it is both national and world; it is both world and national". From this point of view, national literature to the world literature is not difficult, but the real integration, the real realization of the vision of world literature, that there is still a "heavenly journey" to go.