«A tour de force in world literature studies. A brilliant, wide-ranging and deeply reflective account that opens up new vistas of theory and critical practice on the cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamics in world literature.»

Debjani Ganguly, Professor of English, University of Virginia, USA, and Editor of The Cambridge Hist

«This volume offers a fascinating insight into the interplay between the cosmopolitan and the vernacular in a wide-ranging group of examples from different cultures and periods. The series introduction provides an incisive overview of how this approach to literary studies relates to other theories of world literature, setting out its difference from theories of systems and circulation, as well as from other relational pairs, such as the centre and periphery or the global and local. The emphasis in this particular volume is on how the polysemic concept of the world embraces the linguistic, the anthropological and the cultural, among others; literature contributes to making these worlds on overlapping intratextual and extratextual levels. The nine essays collected here explore the cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamic through a mixture of close reading and cultural analysis, always sensitive to context, nuance and plurality. Literature and the Making of the World is warmly recommended not just to readers interested in the debates surrounding world literature, or to readers interested in the specific case studies, but also to those who are interested in how literature contributes to the ways that we create and make sense of the world around us.»

Richard Hibbitt, Co-Director of the Centre for World Literatures, University of Leeds, UK

«World literature in this collection is less a stable system and more a dynamic set of constellations, constantly made, unmade and remade. Cosmopolitan and vernacular become unfixed and take on many guises in this theoretically and empirically rich and exciting collection.»

Francesca Orsini, Professor Emerita of Hindi and South Asian Literatures, SOAS, University of London