‘Today, young adult literature forms the fastest growing market’
LUCKNOW: Martin Puchner is professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature and the Norton Anthology of Western Literature. His Harvard MOOC (massive open online course) has brought four thousand years of literature to students across the globe. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Puchner, who was in Lucknow to deliver a lecture at Lucknow University, talked to. Richa Srivastava on his favourite subject, literature. Excerpts from the interview: young readers) in literature ? I end my story of literature with Harry Potter because it is one of the most successful books—or book series. For a long time, authors of youth literature were looked down upon. It wasn’t seen as real literature. Today, thanks to Harry Potter and others, this is changing. Tolkien is revered. I have several friends who wrote novels, but now they are working on young adult fiction. It is the fastest growing market. Bookstores in the US devote more and more shelf space to YA (young adult) literature. How has technology impacted in making literature accessible ? In studying 4,000 years of history, I have found that all new writing technologies have made literature accessible to larger groups of people. This was true of the alphabet, when it was introduced in Greece and the Near East. It was true with the introduction of paper in China and above all it was true when print made literature cheaper- first in China—the earliest surviving printed text is the Diamond Sutra— and then in northern Europe. Today, we are living through another revolution in writing technologies, the Internet, which is yet again making literature accessible.
World literature is vast and can only be spread through translation.Do you think translation dilutes the interpretation and the essence gets lost?
Translation is a huge challenge. Everyone who knows a text in the original will feel that a translation can never be quite as good. But I think of translation also as an opportunity to make literature of the past accessible to today. Translation isn’t just change from one language to another, or one culture to another. It is often a translation across time, from the past to the present. Many texts from the distant past are difficult to read; translation can make that process easier. Occasionally, there are texts that some people feel are improved in translation.
There have been instances when the thin line between literature and history has vanished com pletely. Your take?
Yes, the line between fiction and fact, history and literature is a difficult one. The distinction itself is relatively recent. Many of the ancient epics are neither fact nor fiction. Asking if they are true or not, is the wrong question. They are neither. I call the foundational stories-- stories that are reference points for entire cultures. They can give some guidance to our lives through tradition, without being either true or false.
What do you have to say about the distinction between popular fiction and canonical text?
What is seen and dismissed as popular today might become canonical tomorrow. This has happened before. It happened above all with the novel. When the novel became a dominant genre in the 18th century, many people warned readers, especially women, to not read novels . But today, the same novels are seen as canonical literature. An earlier example, the Arabian Nights were dismissed as popular literature. Now they are part of the world literature canon.