This volume opens the series of papers presented at the Vienna Congress of AILC/ICLA 2016, beginning with eight keynotes. Thirty-four further papers are dedicated to the central theme of the conference: the linguistic side of world literature, under different focal points. The volume further contains five roundtables, the papers of a workshop of the UNESCO memory of the worlds programme, a presentation of the avldigital.de platform, as well as several bibliographically enriched overviews of the special lexicography of comparative literature, up to date versions of the ICLA publications, and an example of multiple translations of a famous modern classic.