Panel 9: Chick Lit(s) as World Literature(s) – Minor Reputation and Major Circulation, Transitions and Transformations (original) (raw)

2021, Book of Abstracts: World Literature and the Minor: Figuration, Circulation, Translation, 5 –7 May 2021 (KU Leuven)

Chick lit is – by the nature of its popularity and economic pull – world literature, even if it has not found much acceptance within academic circles as such. This friction between major circulation and minor reputation creates opportunities for pluralization driven by strategies – such as, including complex topics which connect the local/regional with the global, consider gender/identity in terms of transformation, and shift the grounds for discussions about transculturation and decolonisation – that deny simplistic readings and force fresh approaches. Focusing thus on how the genre fits into the chorus of the so-called “new world literatures” (Sturm-Trigonakis), this panel brings together five very different elucidations of chick lit to expose the sheer potential for a veritable chick-lit discourse on a par with other critically acclaimed genres. Narratives of migration linking the USA, Canada, the UK, and the Philippines, British young adult literature and chick lit, Swedish auto-fiction, and South African postcolonial women´s literature are discussed in contrast and comparison with each other, revealing the cultural and linguistic adaptability of a young, white, Western, heterosexual, cosmopolitan protagonist-driven literary form. Chick lit thus plays with and challenges its minor reputation and major circulation by way of showing its capacity to transform itself, intersect with other genres, and evolve the literary landscape it is being translated into.