馬丁·普赫納是哈佛大學拜倫和安妮塔·維也納戲劇、英語與比較文學講席教授,在戲劇、現代主義和哲學等領域著述頗豐。自《諾頓世界文學選集》第三版(2012)起,普赫納一直擔任該書的主編。2018年,《諾頓世界文學選集》推出第四版。除在課堂上講授世界文學,普赫納教授還是哈佛大學慕課《世界文學名著》的主講教師,是目前世界文學的主要推動者之一。陳俊松利用在哈佛大學擔任富布賴特訪問學者(2018—2019)的機會,對普赫納教授進行了專訪。本次訪談涉及世界文學、比較文學、文學經典、文學選集、文學理論、翻譯等眾多重要問題。普赫納教授認為全球化、移民和高校的結構調整是世界文學于1990年代在北美興起的主要原因,它們共同為世界文學在北美的興盛創造了機遇。關于世界文學與比較文學之間的關系,普赫納教授認為,傳統以以歐洲為中心的比較文學因為其狹窄的研究視野逐漸喪失活力,而以挑戰者姿態在上世紀八九十年代崛起的后殖民研究也存在研究范圍(聚焦前殖民地)和歷史時期(關注歐洲殖民時期)兩方面的局限。因此,世界文學以其更廣闊的視野和對文學史更深層次的再現,可看作是對這兩種研究范式的繼承和糾錯。

Martin Puchner is Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and general editor of The Norton Anthology of World Literature.Puchner has published extensively on drama, modernism, philosophy, and world literature. He also co-teaches a Harvard X MOOC—Masterpieces of World Literature. Chen Junsong, a Fulbright visiting scholar at Harvard University(2018—2019), interviewed Puchner on a wide range of topics, including world literature, comparative literature, canon, literary anthology, literary theory, translation, etc. Puchner ascribes the rise of world literature in the 1990 s to globalization, immigration, and the restructuring of universities, which brought opportunities for the current revival of world literature in North America. As for the relationship between world literature and comparative literature, Puchner argues that while traditional Eurocentric comparative literature gradually languished due to its narrow perspective, postcolonial studies which meant to challenge the former, limited in both its scope(focus on former colonies) and period(focus on the period of European colonialism). With its broader perspective and deeper sense of the history of literature, world literature presents itself as an alternative or a correction to these two paradigms.