Transnational subjects cultural and literary encounters. Introduction

The volume collects the selected papers from the literary and cultural sections of the XXVII AIA Conference (Naples 10-12 September 2015). The chosen theme, Transnational Subjects: Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Encounters, proved ideally suited to arouse a consistent and articulated debate on a series of crucial questions from a large number of scholars. In tune with the critical framework outlined by Bill Ashcroft on globalization and its supra–national function, all contributions here engage with the tense entanglement of transnational, transitional and translational issues that mark our age of global networks and traumatic dislocation. This pervasive process of hybridization has also changed the approach to the theory and history of literature, calling for a revisionary debate on ‘world literature’ in which transnationality and interculturality help connect in unforeseen ways past and present texts, authors and translations.