The devil is in the margins (of the text). Karel Čapek and the overthrowing of the center

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After illustrating the various definitions of world literature provided by Karel Čapek in the article Jak se dělá světová literatura ( How to Make World Literature), as well as the various ways in which, according to the author, minor literatures may achieve worldwide recognition, this turns to focus on Čapek’s most famous novel, Válka s mloky ( War with the Newts). Using this publication, we aim to demonstrate, on one hand, that the critical doxa surrounding this heavyweight in the Czech canon can be contested through an analysis that accounts for the literary system’s dominance structures. On the other hand, we also seek to show that this work of literature not only reflects, but also challenges how subordination and domination relations between languages, cultures, and nations are structured. This joint reading of Čapek’s essay and novel—unprecedented in literary criticism—has three goals. The first is to provide a new interpretation of Čapek’s novel, which is almost exclusively read as a “thesis novel” arguing against capitalism, colonialism, militarism, and Nazism. The second is to outline a lesser-known chapter in the history of world literature as a notion by studying an author who, despite coming from a (semi-)marginal space, managed to garner international attention, eventually becoming a giant within science fiction and a benchmark author in European modernism. Lastly, the goal of this analysis is to underscore the need to study literature during an era of globalization via repeated switching between distant and close reading.