English-language literature in an age of globalization

What is it about?

Analogous to other coinages such as Francophone, Hispanophone, Lusophone and of late also Sinophone literature, Anglophone literature is customarily taken to be literature produced by authors writing in English but themselves, for whatever reason, not considered ‘Anglo’, whether of the UK or the US brand, but issuing from the ‘periphery’, usually the former British Empire. However, as the hyphen in my title’s use of the term indicates, I will also take a look at ‘Anglo’ – literature in the narrow sense, that is to say literature produced in the ‘core’ of the English-speaking world, the UK and the US, hence: Anglo-phone literature(s). I will do so from the perspective of ‘global literature’ studies, a term and an approach I see as following and building upon comparative literature, postcolonial studies and world literature, and which I see as adequate and appropriate to the age of ‘globalisation’.

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