Towards a Definition of Small Literatures

This manuscript surveys and re-evaluates discourse on small literatures in comparative literature, world literature studies, and translation studies, arguing for clearer methodological and terminological foundations. While world-system approaches—especially Pascale Casanova’s World Republic of Letters—have highlighted centre–periphery inequalities, their broad generalisations have often eclipsed earlier systemic models developed within small literatures themselves, including Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, Ďurišin’s interliterary process, and regional notions of interference, multilingualism, and creative reception. The study reviews major conceptualisations—minor literature, exiguous literatures, contact cultures, interregional literature, ultraminor literatures, micro-literatures—assessing their value and limits. It then offers a preliminary definition of small literature integrating quantitative criteria (demographic scale, repertoire size, institutional infrastructure, translation capacity) and qualitative ones (territorialisation, historical depth, linguistic position in the global system, autonomy/heteronomy, repertoire formation). Small literatures are defined as territorialised, historically rooted systems whose limited scale and cultural capital place them at the world-literary periphery, yet whose institutionalisation and strategies of capillary worlding shape their visibility. The manuscript also distinguishes small literatures from minority, migrant, and identity-based literatures and outlines directions for future comparative and typological research on their structures, dependencies, and agency within global literary dynamics.