Alexander Beecroft’s Ecology of World Literature

The most important issue in the discussion of world literature today is whether it is possible to diversify the ecosystems of world literature against the hypercentrality of English as the world language and the overcommercialization of the world literature. This can be posed as the question of whether world literature should be viewed from a market-oriented economic perspective or an ecological perspective of diversity. Many world literature theorists, such as Pascale Casanova and Franco Moretti, have explained world literature from an economic and systemic perspective by focusing on the transnational movement of literature in the modern world system and the process of compromise between western literature and non-western literature. Understanding the formation of world literature as a process of cultural compromise and translation between center and periphery has often bypassed the existence of many world literatures that cannot be accounted for by such processes. In recent years, theories of world literature have emerged that attempt to explain typological similarities in literature without relying on concepts of compromise, negotiation, and translation. Alexander Beecroft proposes an alternative model that explores the similarities of literary types in the historical evolution of world literature and emphasizes the ecology of world literature. He seeks to explain the ecology of world literature through the various types of world literature from antiquity to the present. This paper will critically examine Beecroft’s argument and point out that his ecology of world literature is based on the modes of economic exchange of the world system.