Varieties of Literary Worlding: The Different Intercultural Visions of Witold Gombrowicz and Julio Cortázar

Abstract

This article compares Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz and Argentine writer Julio Cortazar, focusing on interculturality. Inspecting Gombrowicz’s Pornografia (1960) and Cortazar’s Hopscotch (1963), it applies Shunqing Cao’s Variation Theory (2012) to demonstrate how both authors, shaped by exile, challenge the Eurocentrism-cultural particularism disjunction. By offering two distinct intercultural visions, they present variations of literary cosmopolitanism: a marginal European critique of Western literary Canon and a non-European approach that seeks inclusion without mere imitation as a cultural hybridization. The article thus highlights how each author’s work embodies unique expressions of intercultural dialogue and a complex, evolving literary cosmopolitanism.