Various external and internal factors shape and condition the literary field: education, the book market, the nation state, political movements, international organizations (like unesco), and specific authorities such as prizes. These factors are examined in this article at different spatial scales: "international," "transnational," "global," "world," "cosmopolitan," which are defined in the first section of the article in order to identify the agents that participate in the formation and functioning of the literary field at these different levels, and thus enable us to better understand the mechanisms of scaleshifting. Three periods are then examined: the era of "inter-nationalism," running from the end of the nineteenth century to the Second World War, the period of "developmental" policy, during which the borders of the transnational literary field were extended beyond the Western world, and the era of "globalization."