This talk will discuss the meanings and functions that translation generated for modern national literatures during their formative period to reconsider literature as part of a dynamic translational process of negotiating foreign values. By examining the triadic literary and cultural relations among Russia, Japan, and colonial Korea, Cho highlights translation as a radical and ineradicable part—not merely a catalyst or complement—of modern national literature. Cho also emphasizes a shared sensibility and literary experience in East Asia, which referred to Russia as a significant other in the formation of its own modern literatures, and thus rethinks the way modern literature developed in Korea and East Asia. While national canons are founded on amnesia regarding their process of formation, framing literature from the beginning as a process rather than an entity allows a more complex and accurate understanding of national literature formation in East Asia and may also provide a model for world literature today.

Heekyoung Cho is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages & Literature. She is author of Translation’s Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature (Harvard, 2016) for which she received an NEH Fellowship for University Teachers as well as an ACLS fellowship.