Current debates account for inequalities in world literature (wherein literature is conceived as a system) by tracing publication and circulation trends of a literary work. The model of approaching literature as one world system of inter-related, connected parts, each marked by its national parameters, may prove deficient for transnational literatures produced by diasporas. In the Armenian context, literature written in Western Armenian after 1915 is produced in the absence of publishing houses, and thus, offers a platform for inquiry into the inadequacy of the world literary system model. Often making its first appearance in serial form within newspapers, a literary work produced in the diaspora find eventual publication in book-form through funds provided by cultural institutions or community benefactors and private printing houses. Its re-publication, circulation, and archiving over time depends, for the large part, on the critical response scholars, intellectuals, and political or cultural institutions ascribe to it. In the transnational setting of the Western Armenian literary tradition, the sporadic and uneven nature of production facilitates the omission of many texts from diaspora’s canon, and more broadly, from world literature. The case of French Armenian writer, Shahan Shahnur’s novel, Nahanch? A?ants Erki [The Retreat Without Song] serves as an appropriate medium for exploration of the “life” of a literary work in the diaspora. Following its serial publication in the newspaper Ha?ach in 1929, the novel engendered a series of evolving critical response over the many decades. Quickly regarded as the Armenian diaspora’s emblematic novel, Nahanch? has enjoyed an exceptional circulation circuit, being heavily advertised, published and republished, translated, and included in anthologies and textbooks. This paper seeks to trace the exceptional life of the novel, from 1929 to the present, and subsequently interrogate the role of Armenian diaspora’s nationalism in its professed task of preserving cultural and literary traditions.

My presentation will focus on the history of early modern (1500-1800) Armenian book production and dissemination/circulation through mercantile, book peddling, and missionary networks. Unlike the previous scholarship on the history of the Armenian book, my study will bring readers and their “readerly response” in distant book consuming centers of the Armenian diaspora (Istanbul, Surat, Madras and Calcutta) back into the center of my analysis of book production at the Mkhitarist Congregation in San Lazzaro, Venice. By focusing on "readerly response," often conveyed in Mkhitarist missionary reports sent from Armenian communities in India to Venice, I hope to show not only what Armenian readers were interested in consuming, thereby enabling me to shed light on the mentalité of the Armenian literate world of the early modern period, but also how their demand for particular sorts of “secular” knowledge (books of histories, geographical treatises, grammar manuals, dictionaries, travel accounts, and so on) was directly influencing the production process in Armenian printing centers such as Venice. By introducing a global history of printing and the periodization scheme of the “early modern world” into Armenian historiography, my presentation thus seeks to integrate the study of the Armenian past(s) into larger debates within world/global history.

At the historical moment when Western Armenian became a standardized literary language, it confronted the most influential political agent in its development: systematic Ottoman censorship. This paper considers the impact of late 19th and early 20th century Ottoman censorship a) on Armenian literary production, specifically in the periodical press, and b) on Armenian institutional and class relations. The development of Western Armenian as a literary language coincided with the era of Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s reign (1876 – 1908). While studies on Ottoman censorship are unfortunately scant and incomplete, enough research does exist to observe its impact on Western Armenian literature and Ottoman-Armenian socio-political relations. As author, poet and literary critic Krikor Beledian has observed, Hamidian censorship was foremost among the forces that determined the predominance of the realist short story among the Ottoman-Armenian, and especially the Istanbulite, literati. This discussion will develop Beledian’s observation by briefly surveying a few prominent short stories by the “Prince of Short Stories,” Krikor Zohrab. The survey will suggest that the generic propensity for the realist short story precipitated an unprecedented allegorical trend that began to inscribe the Armenian woman as an allegorical figure of Ottoman-Armenian subjecthood. In addition, the paper will demonstrate the instrumentality of these censorship laws in rendering the Armenian periodical press into political currency. This aspect of print production colored much of inter-class and institutional relations. It also proved to be ideologically valuable in vying for influence to delineate the terms of Armenian identity and political orientation. These observations will be based on historical accounts, memoirs, and archival sources from revolutionary propaganda organs. Finally, and on the basis of these same sources, the discussion will reveal the rise of a newly influential social class, namely the censors. In the case of Armenian periodicals, most if not all of these censors were ethnic Armenians. Perceptions and representations of them throughout these texts, especially propaganda organs and post-Hamidian memoirs, reveal that Armenianness was determined as much, if not more, by ideological and class allegiance as by ethnic affiliation. Hence, it was possible for writer Hagop Oshagan to refer to this group as “Armenian-Turk,” a category that, more broadly, referred to informants. A brief interpretation of Daniel Varoujan’s poem, “Matnijë” [“The Informant”] will ground and support this interpretation. Thus, the paper will reveal how Ottoman-Armenian printing functioned as a political apparatus in devising constantly shifting national and ethnic boundaries.