Abstract: Since the turn of the century, explorations into world literary theories have taken on the nature of general systems theory, which has been particularly benefited from the impact Immanuel Wallerstein's world system theory. This trend in the study of literary theories represents an attempt to simultaneously transcend the modern and post-modern paradigm. For this trend, world literature system is constructed with the assumption that literature can be holistically approached, which may foreshow an ambition of a systematic macro-reconstruction after post-modern fragmentation, but this trend may be distinguished from the unity of modernism as it rejects unicentrism. The paper argues that the research along this trend, although largely Western-centred, could provide a starting point to break the inequality of world literature system in the future and that the trend could be understood as a call for the historical awareness which has been suspended by the skepticism of postmodernism and a continuation of the humanism in comparative literary studies and world literature.

Key words: world literary theory, system theory, Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti, David Damrosch