The increasingly globalized circulation and interdependence of literary practices calls for a revision of the history of national and continental genres. This volume focuses attention from a transareal perspective on the growing diversity of genres in the move towards cultural globalization. It is less interested in the increasing homogenization of genres and of reader expectations resulting from globalized structures of communication, but rather in a new heterogeneity of literary forms which arises from the processes of hybridization, transculturation, creolization and cultural transfer. On the basis of case studies on Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa and the USA from the colonial period to the present day, the contributions examine different scenarios of the global circulation of literary forms, combined with theoretical reflections on the connections between cultural globalization and the history of genres.