Galin Tihanov seeks to locate the Anglo-Saxon discourse of ‘world literature’ vis-à-vis three major reference points: time, space, and language, and to examine the potential of literature to construct its own images of 'world literature'. Galin Tihanov seeks to locate the Anglo-Saxon discourse of ‘world literature’ vis-à-vis three major reference points: time, space, and language, and to examine the potential of literature to generate its own images of 'world literature', including those facilitating a skeptical or ironic meta-reflection. In the first part, the paper offers a chronotopic analysis of ‘world literature’ as a construct, while the second part analyses a key 1930s novel in order to gauge the potential of literature to reflect on itself as 'world literature'.