Abstract
This chapter considers how a selection of high-profile cosmopolitan novels that converge on London are made to mean by an internationally dispersed, non-metropolitan reading public. How does reading at a distance impact upon the production of literary meaning and value? Available scholarship has tended to approach this question by focusing upon how local literatures at the periphery have been incorporated by Western readers at the metropolitan centre. This chapter works in the opposite direction to ask how readers outside London take up a variety of positions in relation to the literary capital. Contrary to certain accounts of the deterritorialized audience associated with globalization studies, evidence drawn from the audiences studied here suggests that reading remains a stubbornly situated and carefully ‘staked out’ activity.
Key authors, texts, case studies or examples: Zadie Smith (White Teeth. Penguin Books‚ London‚ 2000); Monica Ali (Brick Lane. Doubleday‚ London‚ 2003); Andrea Levy (Small Island. Headline‚ London‚ 2004).
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Procter, J. (2017). The World Republic of Readers. In: Martín-Lucas, B., Ruthven, A. (eds) Narratives of Difference in Globalized Cultures. New Comparisons in World Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62133-3_5
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