The Goethean Concept of World Literature and Comparative Literature

Birus, Hendrik

doi:10.7771/1481-4374.1090

Cited by 23 publications

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“…the novelty it assigns to world literature, illustrates why this may be the case. In line with Birus (2000), who emphasized the ambiguity of Goethe's language, it has become commonplace to argue that world literature for Goethe was either arriving or had just arrived, based on his comment that world literature "is at hand [an der Zeit]," which signifies both (Goethe 1901, 175). But it is important to stress that world literature for Goethe was more of the future than of the present.…”

Section: Goethe's World Literature: Cosmopolitan Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

(Haunted) Cosmopolitan Spaces

Maurits¹

2019

Anglistik

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Goethe's modern concept of world literature and Scott's modern ghost story, both the first of their kind, emerged only months apart, in January and October of 1827, respectively. 1 A connection between the concept and the literary form, or between the two authors, seems cursory at first glance. Certainly, Goethe and Scott were contemporaries: they died 13 days apart in 1832, were described by Thomas Carlyle as the "two kings of poetry," and were continuously familiar with each other's work (qtd. in Scott 1891, 379, n 1). Yet Scott never mentioned world literature in his journal or letters and even seemingly opposed the ideal of world literature in practice. As he wrote in his journal, he made it "a rule seldom to read, and never to answer, foreign letters from literary folks"-with the exception of letters from Goethe, "a wonderful fellow, the Ariosto at once, and almost the Voltaire of Germany" (Scott 1891, 234). Goethe admired Scott for his essays on the supernatural as well as for his novels, and said that Scott was "a great genius; he has not his equal, [his] art [is] wholly […] new, with laws of its own" and "so high that it is hard to give a public opinion about it" (Goethe 1901, 358; 360). But there appears to be no evidence that Goethe read Scott's ghost stories, much less that they had been of influence on his world literature. As Eppers has argued, the Goethe-Scott relationship remained an "encounter from afar" (2006, 166, my translation). As I aim to show in this essay, however, there is a connection between Goethe's modern world literature and Scott's modern ghost story. This connection, I argue, is historical rather than personal, by which I mean to say that both Goethe and Scott draw on the same raw material in the form of what I call the cosmopolitan space-it becomes a space of anticipation in the former and one of monstrosity in the latter. I propose the cosmopolitan space as an instance of an 'ideologeme,' a concept first used prominently by Bakhtin and Medvedev (1981) and later developed by Kristeva as a way to analyze ideology intertextually, at "the different structural levels of the text" (1980, 36). Jameson, building on those accounts, specified ideologemes as the "smallest intelligible" (1983, 61) units or building blocks of ideology-the "ultimate raw material" (73) of cultural products. For him, they are "amphibious formation[s]," because they can manifest themselves conceptually and as a "protonarrative" or "collective class fantasy" (73). The cosmopolitan space, then, is an (ideological) unit of meaning, which can be expressed on various textual levels and in various media-in our case, Goethe's concept of modern world literature and Scott's literary form of the modern ghost story. 1 The concepts of world literature used before Goethe, like those of Wieland and Schlözer, were classicist. As I will argue in the second section of this essay, Scott reinvented the form of the ghost story with "The Highland Widow."

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Section: Goethe's World Literature: Cosmopolitan Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

(Haunted) Cosmopolitan Spaces

Maurits¹

2019

Anglistik

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“…(Goethe 2013: 19-20) The literary scholar Hendrik Birus has argued that by raising the importance of Weltliteratur, Goethe was not seeking "the replacement of national literatures by World Literature, but the rapid blossoming of a multitude of European and non-European literatures and the simultaneous emergence of a world literature (mostly in English translations) as two aspects of one and the same process". (Birus 2000) The German writer believed that whenever national literatures enter the arena of World Literature, they can cross national boundaries and become united by a common human nature. According to literary scholar Marko Juvan, Goethe's "aesthetic perception of works from foreign languages and distant civilisations enabled the self-reflection of the modern European individual, while interliterary traffic and the cooperation of intellectuals in a literary republic was the path to intercultural understanding and durable peace between nations".…”

Section: How World Literature and Intertextuality Created A Universal...mentioning

confidence: 99%

World Literature and Mythology: Guarantees of Freedom of Man and Nation in Sigitas Geda’s Poetry

Bagdonė

2023

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In this article, the author uses the theory of intertextuality (Julia Kristeva, Gérard Genette, Marco Juvan) to analyse reflections on the openness of cultural identity and Europeanness in Sigitas Geda’s (1943–2008) poetry and his commentaries. The objective is to discuss how resistance to Soviet ideology could be constructed in mythological and world-literary contexts. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s vision of the universality of World Literature has remained important in Geda’s work. The Lithuanian poet adopted and applied it in his work by creating a mythological foundation as a unifying universal, a synthesis of Lithuanian and various national cultures. In this way, he conveyed a deeper sense of European identity, coming from the intertexts of modern World Literature (especially the poetry of François Villon, Johannes Bobrowski, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Celan). Geda freed the imagination of a reader constrained by the Soviet occupation and directed it towards the universal world.

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“…Desde este punto de vista, la Weltliteratur sería un aspecto más de la Bildung. Entretanto, Jost destaca que, con sus reflexiones en torno a la Weltliteratur, Goethe provee a la literatura comparada de sus materiales básicos, que luego la disciplina organizaría crítica e históricamente (1974), mientras que Birus (2000) y Pizer (2014) consideran que Goethe detecta tempranamente fenómenos como el nacimiento de un mercado literario mundial no limitado por estructuras nacionales y la globalización de tendencias literarias que podrían implicar la desaparición de las tradiciones culturales nacionales. En ese sentido, las reflexiones de Goethe anuncian que, para principios del siglo XIX, las literaturas nacionales no podían comprenderse en forma autónoma y aislada puesto que se encontraban ya entonces entremezcladas, eran parte de un mundo de intercambios y transacciones.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

“…Cabe entonces preguntarse cuáles son las obras que, para el autor de Weimar, deberían formar parte de esta literatura mundial. Birus (2000) y Damrosch (2006) coinciden en que Goethe circunscribía la Weltliteratur a un canon de obras maestras de la literatura del mundo, entre los que menciona obras como El Quijote, Hamlet o el Decamerón. Fuertemente influenciado por los ideales humanistas y la estética clásica, el canon de Goethe estaría prácticamente limitado a obras europeas, razón por la cual, parte de la bibliografía especializada considera que la Weltliteratur posee una raigambre eurocentrista.…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

“…Luego, destaca las similitudes y afinidades formales y temáticas presentes en las literaturas nacionales más distantes, es decir que la diferencia lingüística no resulta, desde su punto de vista, razón suficiente para trazar fronteras rígidas entre una literatura y otra. Birus (2000) sostiene que frecuentemente se ha tomado a Gespräche mit Goethe no solo como punto inicial de las literaturas comparadas sino también como un alegato goetheano contra el nacionalismo a partir de uno de sus pasajes más citados:…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

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La Weltliteratur gotheana y sus resonancias en la fundación en la primera revista de literaturas comparadas, "Acta comparationis litterarum universarum"

Lenga

2022

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El objetivo de este trabajo es indagar acerca de los diversos modos en los que la compleja tensión entre nacionalismo y cosmopolitismo se resuelven en el proyecto goetheano de la Weltliteratur, uno de los primeros intentos deliberados por forjar una disciplina abocada a pensar la literatura en términos que universales, reconocido como el puntapié inicial para la génesis de las Literaturas comparadas, y en los manifiestos de Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (1877-1888) escritos por filólogo y germanista húngaro Hugo Metzl, en la que se convertiría en la primera revista académica dedicada a las Literaturas comparadas. Asimismo se compararán las políticas con respecto a la traducción e intercambio literario propuestas en los textos programáticos de Goethe y Metzl. Finalmente, se procurará explicar el pasaje del concepto “literatura mundial” a “literaturas comparadas” como un intento por prevenir las tendencias homogeneizantes a nivel cultural latentes ya a fines del siglo XIX.

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The Goethean Concept of World Literature and Comparative Literature

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

(Haunted) Cosmopolitan Spaces

(Haunted) Cosmopolitan Spaces

World Literature and Mythology: Guarantees of Freedom of Man and Nation in Sigitas Geda’s Poetry

La Weltliteratur gotheana y sus resonancias en la fundación en la primera revista de literaturas comparadas, "Acta comparationis litterarum universarum"

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