In Casanova’s reading of the World Republic of Letters, major restructuration and hence proliferation of the literary world-system is neither totally ordained by academic institutionalization processes, nor confined to the systematization of language through difference and struggle against a hegemonic Latin. In her view, these are no less motivated and driven by the corporate effort of grammarians and writers, an effort that in the case of English drew impetus from a sustained privileging of literature in a self-assertive nationalism. 1 Applied to the medieval and “pre-modern” Islamic cultural world-system, one can argue that grammar, lexicography, and literary production assume even more significance as evidenced in the massive production and demand.
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