9. Transnational Modernism and the Problem of Eurochronology

The article argues that the discipline of Comparative Literature has much to offer when rethinking historical periodisations, and when reworking historical categories that go beyond nation-centric interpretive paradigms. It is in many ways a meta-discipline, always in search of new identities and self-definitions, of new methodologies, genealogies and typologies. Initially, the field was (and it partially still is) defined by Eurocentric assumptions, a concerted effort to consolidate European universal literary and cultural values, assimilating, appropriating or directly marginalising other societies and their literary and cultural creativity. It now attempts to define a more transnational and interdisciplinary literary sphere beyond the nation-state and center-periphery models, with remarkable studies that cross chronological, cartographic, and linguistic boundaries.