César Domínguez*, Giovanna Di Rosario, and Matteo Ciastellardi On Writing a Comparative Literary History: Delocalizing Minor Literatures in European Languages in the Age of ‘Big Data’ https://doi.org/10.1515/arcadia-2018-0028 Abstract: “Minor literature” is an elusive concept in literary scholarship. Its wide- spread use stands in sharp contrast to the paucity of its theoretical development, which is limited to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s 1975 seminal book Kafka. Pour une littérature mineure. We claim that a comparative history of minor literatures in European languages – a nonexistent project so far – requires three preliminary steps, namely, conceptual clarification, cross-pollination between comparative literary history and the digital humanities, and a bibliometric analy- sis of the minor-literature constellation. First, conceptual clarification is needed to show, on the one hand, how Deleuze and Guattari’s arguments on minor litera- tures significantly differ from those of what they posit as their source (Kafka’s discussion on kleine Literaturen) and, on the other hand, the existence of alter- native genealogies. Second, by adhering to a Braudelian definition of compara- tive history, the massive data needed for addressing the production and reception of (minor) literatures in specific social and cultural contexts would immensely benefit from recourse to digital tools. Third, and as an example of approaching conceptual clarification with digital tools, a quantitative study of the minor- literature constellation must be performed using a key tool of international scho- larship (the MLA International Bibliography). In the current paper, we may only provide an introductory survey of these three fields and, therefore, the results are tentative and further research is needed. Keywords: bibliometrics, big data, comparative literary history, digital huma- nities, minor literature *Corresponding author: César Domínguez, University of Santiago de Compostela, Faculty of Philology, Burgo das Nacións s/nº, 15782 Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña), Spain, email: cesar.dominguez@usc.es Giovanna Di Rosario, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Building B7, Via Durando 38/ A, 20158 Milano, Italy, email: giovanna.dirosario@polimi.it Matteo Ciastellardi, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design, Building B7, Via Durando 38/ A, 20158 Milano, Italy, email: matteo.ciastellardi@polimi.it Arcadia 2018; 53(2): 278–307 Authenticated | cesar.dominguez@usc.es author's copy Download Date | 11/9/18 11:50 AM