Objective Literary theory is often regarded as a twentieth century invention, with no precedents prior to modernity. This relegates older discourses on literature to the status of source material, pertaining to literature’s past, rather than as springboards for literature’s future. While the self-understanding of literary theory’s modernity helped to bring about the discipline’s birth, and hence was innovative in its own time, at present it accounts for many gaps and limits within its current structure, whereby European aesthetic categories remain normative and lesser-known geographies are marginalized within synthetic accounts of literary form. Even when the literatures studied are non-European, the literary theory used to understand these texts often circulates within a restricted set of modern European traditions.A more pluralistic approach to literary knowledge that takes account of the radically different temporalities in the genesis of literary form across different literary traditions, and which explores the different meanings of literature across varying historical and cultural contexts, will reinvigorate the discipline of literary studies with new understandings of the capacity of critique, new views of the role of aesthetic judgment and its ontological foundations, and new ways of imagining the status of literature—poetry in particular—in the public sphere. Through four case studies of Arabic, Persian, Turkic, and Georgian literary theory in the Islamic world (especially the Caucasus), we will produce co-authored articles, individual monographs, and a cumulative anthology of key contributions to literary theory from the Islamic world. Moving beyond the parameters of modernity itself, GlobalLIT seeks to invigorate the discipline of literary studies with new answers to ancient questions. While some of our texts have been studied before, most have not been the subject of sustained scholarly research, and have never before been placed into systematic comparison. Fields of science humanitieslanguages and literatureliterature studiesliterary theoryliterary criticism Keywords world literature literary theory poetics rhetoric translation transnational Caucasus Islam Middle East Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2017-STG - ERC Starting Grant Call for proposal ERC-2017-STG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-STG - Starting Grant Host institution SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER Net EU contribution € 184 412,16 Address THORNHAUGH STREET RUSSEL SQUARE WC1H OXG London United Kingdom See on map Region London Inner London — West Camden and City of London Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 184 412,16 Beneficiaries (3) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 184 412,16 Address THORNHAUGH STREET RUSSEL SQUARE WC1H OXG London See on map Region London Inner London — West Camden and City of London Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 184 412,16 FRIEDRICH-SCHILLER-UNIVERSITÄT JENA Germany Net EU contribution € 64 240,00 Address FÜRSTENGRABEN 1 07743 JENA See on map Region Thüringen Thüringen Jena, Kreisfreie Stadt Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 64 240,00 THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM Participation ended United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 1 250 329,84 Address Edgbaston B15 2TT Birmingham See on map Region West Midlands (England) West Midlands Birmingham Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 250 329,84