ABSTRACT

In considering the topic of world literature and world history, a basic question is whether world literature has a history at all. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the first great proponent of world literature, didn’t think so. For him, Weltliteratur was a phenomenon of the future, not of the past. As he remarked to his disciple Johann Peter Eckermann in January 1827: “National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach” (Eckermann 132). Building on Goethe two decades later, Marx and Engels spoke of world literature as a nascent manifestation of the global marketplace of their times:

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country… . National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature.

The Communist Manifesto 11