Post-Millennium Nobel Literature Prizes in the Context of Global Literary Trends

Abstract

Globalization has intensely affected the leading art of literature that has, for centuries, deployed languages to discharge a pivotal role in the construction of national cultures. Currently, literature is a means of transcending the national to achieve a global dimension. The development of technology, especially in the last half-century, has enabled digitalization, made translation possible at a dizzying pace, and introduced publishing techniques. These advances have shaken the paradigm that only positions literature within the ambit of national borders. Goethe's conception of Weltliteratur in the first half of the 19th century has surpassed his predictions. In particular, the concept has been transmogrified into "global literature" in the current millennium. This reality is most explicitly manifested in the Nobel Prize for literature. The awarding of this most prestigious prize elucidates the preference for literary texts that can achieve recognition in the international arena over prominent works that remain within the scope of national literature. In fact, the Nobel Prizes awarded for literature in the 2000s are increasingly determined by the rules of Weltliteratur, offering opportunities for diverse artists and works to be articulated into international literary networks. This study performed a descriptive analysis of the reasons, genders, countries, languages, genres, and content-related attributes of the artists awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature in the period spanning 2000-2020. The study also attempted to determine the correlations between global literary theory and the post-2000 Nobel Prize awards for literature. The outcomes of the descriptive analysis elucidated that the number of awarded women writers increased in comparison to the period preceding this millennium. The awarded oeuvres were primarily created in English, French, and German, and the awards predominantly represented the genre of the novel.