The literary historian David Damrosch defines “world literature” as a mode in which works circulate beyond their original cultural context, acquiring new meanings and functions. Texts become world literature through processes of translation, reception, and circulation rather than through membership in a fixed canon. According to this view, translation is transformative, literary value shifts with patterns of global circulation, and reading requires a double perspective combining the work’s original context with its later interpretations. In the first part of this article I will suggest that Damrosch’s concept of world literature can be read as implying two theses: (1) that literary texts articulate particular visions of the world, organizing and rendering intelligible human experience, and (2) that these visions are continually reshaped as texts circulate across different historical and cultural contexts, generating new meanings and functions. I will then situate these theses within broader debates in literary theory, showing how certain approaches both support Damrosch’s position and mark his divergence from them. This discussion will raise a broader philosophical question, which I will address in the final part of this article: How should we understand the idea that literary works articulate visions of the world? And how do new contexts of reception reshape these visions?
