World Literature as Reconstruction: Language Philosophy and Worldview in Xiaolu Guo’s <i>Call Me Ishmaelle</i>

Jane Qian Liu

doi:10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258302

Volume 8 Issue 3

Oct. 2025

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Jane Qian Liu. World Literature as Reconstruction: Language Philosophy and Worldview in Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2025, 8(3): 26-45. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258302

Citation:

Jane Qian Liu. World Literature as Reconstruction: Language Philosophy and Worldview in Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle[J]. International Comparative Literature, 2025, 8(3): 26-45. doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258302

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World Literature as Reconstruction: Language Philosophy and Worldview in Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle

doi: 10.19857/j.cnki.ICL.20258302

Jane Qian Liu^,

University of Warwick

Funds:

SJTU-Warwick Joint Seed Fund 2023/24：Chinese British Writers and the Practice of World Literature

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Author Bio:
Jane Qian LIU is an associate professor at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick. She is Head of the Translation and Transcultural Studies Section. Her research interests include translated literature of early twentieth-century China, comparative literature, the history of reading, and British Chinese literature.
Received Date: 2025-06-30
Accepted Date: 2025-09-10

Abstract

Abstract

In the newly published novel Call Me Ishmaelle by the British-Chinese writer Xiaolu Guo, there is a clear homage to Moby Dick by the American novelist Herman Melville. At the same time, there is profound transformation and reconstruction on multiple levels. The narrator Ishmael becomes Ishmaelle who is female, and the story is told from a female perspective. Call Me Ishmaelle subverts the worldview of Moby Dick on multiple dimensions, including the symbolic meanings of the white whale, the relationship between gender and identity, race and power, and it subverts the Christian worldview of the latter with Daoism. The way this novel achieves such subversion is closely related to the features of Xiaolu Guo’s recent works, namely, the close interaction between language and worldview, and the importance she places in language in constructing the world. The conception of World Literature as “window on the world” focuses on the heterogeneity of the content of World Literature, particularly literary works from the third world. However, with increasing globalisation, many literary works demonstrate not only heterogeneity of content, but also that of language. Thanks to Xiaolu Guo’s attention to linguistic issues and linguistic experiments, her works provide new insights into theories of World Literature, foregrounding the significance of linguistic heterogeneity, both as opposition to and as bases for the heterogeneity of content, for World Literature. In contemporary World Literature, language is no longer the mere form of literature, but is closely linked to its content, ideas, and themes. Heterogeneous languages embody transcultural lived experiences and identities, hence reflecting and constructing the multidimensional world in which we live.
- World Literature,
- linguistic heterogeneity,
- Xiaolu Guo,
- Call Me Ishmaelle,
- Herman Melville,
- Moby Dick

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References(26)

References

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