Johns Hopkins University Press
Toward a History of World Literature
Author(s): David Damrosch
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 39, No. 3, Literary History in the Global Age (Summer, 2008)
, pp. 481-495
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533098
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Toward a History
of World
Literature
David Damrosch
The
a global
literary history are
of
threefold,
definition,
involving problems
design, and purpose.
Can the field of inquiry be defined
in such a way that a meaning
at all? If so, could an effective organization
ful history can be conceived
a
to give concrete
a
and
manageable
plan of work be devised
shape to
project of global scope? Finally, and hardest of all, could a history of
challenges
literature
world
In the following
entailed
in writing
be written
that anyone would
actually want
I will seek to reach affirmative
answers
pages,
to read?
to these
questions.
Definition
Our globalizing
this either the easiest or the hardest
age makes
to write a history of world literature. Until
recently, the practice of
was
so
national
dominated
that the
ary history
by
heavily
paradigms
idea of a global literary history would have appeared
implausible
even?worse
yet?uninteresting.
It seemed
perfectly
reasonable
for
time
liter
very
and
Ian
Watt to call his study of several British novelists The Rise of theNovel rather
than The Rise of the British Novel1 A few reviewers noted that remarkably
entities had been written elsewhere by such influential figures
novel-like
as Cervantes
and Madame
de Lafayette,
but it was generally
accepted
that the British novel had a distinctive
national history that could well
be studied?or
could even best be studied?on
its own, independent
to
of developments
in France or Spain. Still less did it seem necessary
or northward
to Heliodorus
to Njals Saga and
and Apuleius,
to The Tale of Genji Even if one had found a way to finesse the
differences
between
the novel, the ancient romance,
the saga, and the
it would have
monogatari,
perhaps under the rubric of "prose fiction,"
been hard to imagine
that such disconnected
times and places could
a common
in
yield anything
history, or at least any history
resembling
go back
eastward
the linear, teleological mode
The situation was similar
Gerald
Graffs
pathbreaking
implied by a phrase such as "the rise of."
as well as
for institutional
literary history.
the
thus
bears
title Professing Literature
study
New Literary History, 2008, 39: 481-495
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482
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
rather than, say, Professing English and American Literature in the United
States.2 Graff does include the early history of classical studies inAmerica,
that other modern
and he acknowledges
literatures have long been
in
this
the
national
country; yet
taught
specificity of his study could go
in
his
is
from the outset in the body of
and
assumed
title
without
saying
his book. Indeed, had Graff written a global history of the study of all
in all countries, Professing Literature would
literatures
likely have found
far fewer readers than it did, and most people would only have looked
at the chapter or two most relevant to their field of study. The nation
was the natural frame for an institutional
history, just as the conjoined
and America
national
seemed
the logical focus
literatures of England
the American
within
setting.
When
of a single nation,
people did look beyond the boundaries
they
a
usually stayed within
particular region, as in Ernst Robert Curtius's Eu
ropean Literature and theLatin Middle Ages or Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The
Representation ofReality inWestern Literature? Even within their announced
focus on Europe
and on Western
and Auerbach
literature, Curtius
on
a
concentrated
the
literatures
of
few
So often
countries.
largely
just
across
its
for
remarkable
Western
Mimesis
literature,
indeed,
range
praised
as
been
well
have
subtitled
The
might just
Representation of Reality in Italy
to fifteen of the book's twenty central texts.
and France?home
tacit literary histories with a national
Survey courses, too, constructed
or
at best
American
lish
and
regional
scope.
For
most
of
the
"Intro to Lit" course drew entirely
American)
materials.
World
literature
twentieth
on Western
courses,
century,
the
typical
(and mostly
and
the
Eng
antholo
in defining
"the world" purely
gies that served them, saw no incongruity
in terms of Western
and
its
classical
and
biblical
antecedents,
Europe
sometimes with a few Russian or American
writers
thrown in for good
measure.
This situation has changed dramatically
since the mid-1990s,
with Caws and Prendergast's
HarperCollins World Reader that
some 475 authors from all over the world, closely followed
by
the "Expanded Edition" of The Norton Anthology of World Literature that
two thousand pages of non-Western
included
material
along with four
beginning
included
and American
texts.4
pages of European
The waning of the hegemony
of the national paradigm and the open
then, make this an auspicious
ing out of a burgeoning
global perspective,
a
time to contemplate
the project of
history of world literature. Yet this
best of times may also be the hardest of times for such a history, for
thousand
the very history that it underwrites.
This
may undermine
globalization
can occur in one of two quite different ways. First,
available
by making
an ever-increasing
the globalization
of world
literature
literary field,
creates an explosion
of works that by all rights should be included,
in
a kind of expansio ad absurdum, into a boundless
intercontinental
space.
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A HISTORY
TOWARD
OF WORLD
483
LITERATURE
ever written,
If world
literature is the sum total of everything
to deal not only with an endless array of texts but also with a
of local histories
and competing
literary cultures, which may
an
overall
resembling
history even if such a mass of
anything
could
be mastered
we have
plethora
not have
material
and presented.
is the fact that a global world literature
An equal and opposite problem
not
to
much
have
may
history
begin with. The "New Global History"
the
historian
Bruce
for instance, sees globaliza
Mazlish,
by
championed
as
a
back
tion
dating
fifty years at most,
involving not only
phenomenon
a
our
sense of ourselves
new economic
relations but
fundamental
shift in
a
our
new world will necessarily differ
and
world.5 The literature of such
come before
as
If
has
it.
literature
is defined
from
what
world
greatly
or
in
whether
authorial
intention
literature of genuinely
scope,
global
among readers, then we are only just now seeing the
true history
lies in the future rather
of this literary form, whose
assumed
than in the past. This is far from a new idea; Goethe
the futu
uses
term.
of
in
his
first
He
of
his
Weltliteratur
very
inaugural
clearly
rity
in its circulation
birth
literature as a new kind
thought of world
that he believed
older national
literatures
to the
of entity, a successor
to be withering
he
As
away.
in January
"National
told his disciple Johann Peter Eckermann
1827,
literature is now a rather unmeaning
term; the epoch of world literature
is at hand,
and
everyone
must
strive
to hasten
its
approach."6
line of thought, we can say that the first adumbra
Following Goethe's
tions of world literature began to appear in the late nineteenth
century,
in the work of figures such as Rudyard Kipling, who was being read?and
was
writing
to be
read?on
four
continents
while
still
in his
late
twen
ties. Yet even Kipling's
readership was largely limited in the 1880s to the
to focus on Englishmen
world, and his works continued
English-speaking
at
in their imperial rela
home
and
Irish
adolescent)
(and the occasional
we
the full flowering
witnessed
tions abroad. Only since the 1960s have
in concep
of the kind of Weltliteratur envisioned
by Goethe, postnational
in reception,
created by such globe-hopping
tion and fully international
in this way, world
writers as Kipling's
successor, Salman Rushdie. Defined
a subset of
at
all. It encompasses
literature has hardly any history
only
works written even today and includes almost nothing written more than
is to say anytime during the first 99 percent of the
fifty years ago, which
thousand years of the world's
literary production.
is a purely contem
that globalization
Yet not all historians
suppose
can
fundamental
mechanisms
its
porary phenomenon;
already be seen
and
in early modern
of
trade, with far
conquest,
patterns
exploration,
as the
in such routes of trade and cultural exchange
earlier examples
a
to
considerable
allow
historical
Silk Road. It is particularly
appropriate
depth to world literature, given the importance of language for literature.
five
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484
The
NEW
crucial
stage
in a work's
movement
a national
from
LITERARY
context
HISTORY
to
the
literature is its reception within a different
cultural and
sphere
as
as
The
occurred
with
realm,
linguistic
Epic of Gilgamesh
early as the
it was translated
second millennium
BCE when
into Hittite
in what is
on
a
now Turkey. The Homeric
new
in
took
life
epics
imperial Rome,
even though Horace
and Virgil still read them in Greek.
of world
To be sure, a book's movement
into the sphere of world
literature
can occur with dramatic
can
at the
sold
be
speed today: foreign rights
Frankfurt Book Fair for translation
into ten or twenty languages while a
work is still in manuscript.
Yet this literary globalization
represents a dif
ference
in degree rather than a difference
in kind from long-established
Voltaire's Candide entered
processes of textual travel and transformation.
to become
world literature when it crossed the English Channel
Candid
a voyage that took
in English
translation,
place in the very year of its
a matter
in 1759.7 Within
of months,
Candide was
original publication
across
or
read
and
either
in
French
in one of
being
Europe
beyond,
a
some
In
number
of
translations.
indeed,
rapidly increasing
respects,
the absence of copyright
meant
laws in Voltaire's
that
could
works
day
circulate abroad more freely than they do today: Candide was translated
into English not once but twice within a year. Within
the book itself,
South American
in a tip of Voltaire's
Candide's
nam,
had
recently
received
its
a stop to meet
slaves in Suri
to Aphra Behn, whose Oroonoko
travels include
plumed
seventh
hat
translation
into
French.
Candides rapid circulation
in different
regions and languages marked
an extension
of the worldliness
inscribed within the work itself, not only
in Candide's
transatlantic misadventures
but on the very title page of the
book. Having
suffered censorship
and imprisonment
for earlier works,
Candide anonymously,
Voltaire published
in the form
or, more precisely,
of an anonymous
translation
"de l'Allemand de Mr. le Docteur RALPH,"
supposed author of the narrative shortly before his death on a battlefield
of the Seven Years' War. Not caring what trouble Voltaire's
anti-Catholic
him
into
at
the
London
home,
get
polemics might
publisher
placed
on the title page of what
Voltaire's name prominently
the
truly became
to be in French.
translation
it had only pretended
Doctor Ralph's work thus openly became Voltaire's
book for the first
time only in translation. The choice of a German
"author" for Candide's
adventures
is particularly
apt since Candide is in many ways an updat
Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (1668),
ing of Grimmelshausen's
set in the Thirty Years' War, predecessor
to the Seven Years' War that
about Doctor Ralph's death.8 The endlessly
na?ve Simplicius
brought
war-torn
around
wanders
and
visits a
Simplicissimus
Europe
ultimately
hidden
Dorado,
the sunken city of Atlantis;
like Candide's
utopia,
stopover in El
an
the detour provides
for
satire
opportunity
against the vio
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A HISTORY
TOWARD
lence
and
ineluctably
World
literature
and
be said to have preceded
centuries.
This
from
was
created
a dynamic
through
world
Indeed,
the birth of the modern
the
already
was
interplay
can
literature
nation-state
of Hutcheson
view
Grimmelshausen
outset.
the
literatures.
regional
on
Drawing
on the Swiss border, Voltaire
point
author
has always been
national
among
Europe.
from his vantage
international
485
LITERATURE
of modern
corruption
as well as Behn
an
OF WORLD
by many
who
Posnett,
Macaulay
to
the first book entitled Comparative Literature (he claimed
published
in 1886.9 Posnett sketches the history
have coined the term in English)
as a
literature
from
progression
clan-based
local,
to
literature
of
the wider
however, he places the
spheres of the nation and empire. Significantly,
birth of world literature in the Hellenistic
world of late antiquity,
long
before
the
world
literature.
age
of
national
In
Roman
no
and
the
Empire
paved
connected
closely
longer
in a host
readable
of
the
account,
for
way
to
regions
given
around
wrote
his
or
Metamorphoses
was
but
Punic,
language,
as
sent
Golden
Ass
a
after
in Posnett's
speaking
to
boy
so as
in Latin,
of
and
its
treats
he
reach
modes
community
the
empire.
A good example of a writer of world literature
be Apuleius
of Madauros.
grew up
Apuleius
African
discusses
transcultural
nonlocalized
new,
any
he
which
literatures,
Posnett's
of
the
writing,
traditions,
sense would
a local North
in Greece.
He
study
to entertain
readers
from Syria to Spain with his asinine hero's adventures
in Thessaly and
at
outset
the
for
his
unconventional
Latin
Egypt.10 Comically apologizing
a
one
to
rider
from
himself
circus
who
compares
style, Apuleius
jumps
horse
galloping
sis mirrors
his
to another.
hero's
He
physical
asserts
transformation
that
his
linguistic
metamorpho
and
his
readers
promises
if they will attend to "aGreekish
tale" written on papyrus "with
delight
the sharpness of a reed from the Nile" (3-5).
A full history of world literature should draw as much on Posnett as
on Goethe?or
on
Immanuel
Wallerstein?and
should
include
Apuleius,
Murasaki Shikibu, and Voltaire as well as Kipling and Rushdie.
It should
unfold
the varied processes
and strategies through which writers have
between
local
individually and collectively furthered the long negotiation
cultures and the world beyond
them.
Design
What
The
should
possibilities
such a history
are
almost
look like, and how
as
various
as world
should
literature
it be written?
itself
and
toWiki
could be located anywhere on a sliding scale from monomania
one
a
to
At
could
undertake
write
this
extreme,
pedia.
single polymath
either
in
the
form
of
H.
G.
Outline
abbreviated
Wells's
ofHistory
history,
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486
or
NEW
in the more
mode
expansive
of Arnold
LITERARY
HISTORY
twelve-volume
Toynbee's
Study
seem, Posnett
ofHistory.11 Daunting
though such an enterprise might
it
in
his Comparative Literature, the fruit of a decade
already attempted
of intensive reading in everything
from Sanskrit epics to Arabic qasidas
to
tales.
Navajo
Posnett's
was
book
a remarkable
achievement,
offering
a
genuinely global account of the evolution of literature from its earliest
eras and its most basic manifestations
up to the literatures of his day.
Posnett naturally relied heavily on the work of specialists in the various
cultures he was surveying, but there is nothing wrong with scholarship
that synthesizes more
has
specialized work. A version of this procedure
been revived recently in Franco Moretti's
for
"distant reading," a
call
broad-based
form of study that would build on the results of local liter
to construct a full picture of global literary wave patterns.
ary histories
"Literary
history,"
Moretti
become
"will
says,
'second
a
hand':
patchwork
of other people's
research, without a single direct textual reading. Still ambi
and
tious,
(world literature!); but the
actually even more so than before
to the distance from the text."12
ambition
is now directly proportional
Posnett's
to
repeat
newly
achievement
on
today,
though
own
terms.
his
we
the world's
forcing
literary
traditions
into
want
wouldn't
the
Surveying
of the world's
in only three hundred
literary production
a
out
left
deal
and oversimplified
what
great
inevitably
history
Posnett
in,
current
is thus
project
Posnett's
a one-size-fits-all
entire
pages,
he put
of
model
social evolution borrowed
from the theories of Herbert
Spencer. Even
success
the
fact
that
he
could
write his book at all, and with as much
so,
as he did, shows that the
can
recent
be done. More
attempts at a
thing
to
broad-based
involve collaborative
work
literary history have tended
that Posnett
ing groups, whose members
collectively have the expertise
alone
the
could
novel,
never
acquire.
77 Romanzo,
had
Moretti's
five-volume
seventy
contributors,
project
their
on
the
of
history
coordinated
work
clear editorial direction
from Moretti,
and it succeeds
in combin
ing sweeping accounts of the global spread of the novel with extended
close study of individual literary cultures and even single works. Distant
reading joins hands with close reading in this exhilarating
project.13
severe problems
Yet the global history of the novel already presents
of scale. II Romanzo runs to five hefty volumes
in its full Italian edition,
and it
yet it treats a single genre of only relatively recent prominence,
with
is
selective
necessarily
even
so. And
how
many
people
will
ever
read
the five volumes? Not Moretti's
readers, at
through
English-language
rate.
Full
are
translations
in Korean
and Spanish, but
any
appearing
Princeton University
Press demurred,
instead for a two-volume
opting
to the full history of the
To extend Moretti's
abridgment.
procedure
world's
literature,
and an entire
one
might
shelf of volumes.
need
Not
two
or
three
that a history
hundred
necessarily
contributors
needs
to be
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TOWARD
A HISTORY
cover
from
readable
to
487
LITERATURE
OF WORLD
but
cover,
at
some
a
point
can
project
become
an overview,
so large as to defeat the fundamental
purpose of offering
a
of the
and we are dealing with something
compendium
approaching
histories
of
Over
the
the world's
past
literatures.
national
the
century,
quarter
International
Litera
Comparative
a series on the "Comparative History of
ture Association
has sponsored
could eventually
become
which
in European
Literatures
Languages,"
a bookcase
or
full
rather
of a large-scale
the nucleus
literary history,
such as ro
with volumes on movements
of literary histories. Together
on Caribbean
and symbolism,
the series includes volumes
manticism
literature,
literature, a creatively conceived history of Eastern European
and a three-volume
literary culture.14 These
history of Latin American
attend to smaller as well as larger nations and to
histories
admirably
as to direct met
the varied relations among peripheral
regions as well
the ICLA's work, other literary
relations. Beyond
ropolitan/peripheral
historians have begun to rethink regional literary histories. An ambitious
the boundaries
literature can be
of European
first attempt to reconceive
and Guy Fontaine's History ofEuropean
found in Annick Benoit-Dusausoy
As the editors say at the
150 scholars contributed.
Literature, to which
obsession with nationhood,
outset, "A persistent
limiting an author to
is a mindset,
one particular area, linguistically and geographically,
passed
on to us by the nineteenth
In
that
dies
hard."15
century,
place of nations,
the Enlighten
movements
the volume offers pan-European
(humanism,
ment,
romanticism),
still
Though
tion, unlike
Fontaine's
Friedrich
volume
de
traveler's
in
top-heavy
for
instance,
Sade,
Schiller
or Alexander
a
represents
tale,
major
shift
the
novel),
picaresque
"Woman and Myth").
and Genius,"
("Sensibility
somewhat
Marquis
writing?the
(the
genres
themes
and broad
its
of
representation
is
given
major-author
French
atten
and
Pope?Benoit-Dusausoy
from
most
earlier
practice,
and Catalan writers among the
Dutch,
freely interspersing Hungarian,
for example,
the
symbolist movement,
great power figures. Discussing
include the Czech Karel Hlav?c, the Greek Konstantinos
the contributors
the Hungarian
the Swede Vilhelm Ekelund,
Jen? Komj?thy,
Hadjopoulos,
the Bulgarian
Ivan Vazov, and the Flemish August Vermeylen
along with
as
the
and
Rimbaud
the
French
such standard figures
Verlaine,
poets
German
Stefan
George,
and
the English
aesthetician
Arthur
Symons
(498-502).
in its sweep, and yet it
The History of European Literature is impressive
worked
to sit down and read through. The 150 contributors
is difficult
are often more
results
each
and
the
from
in
isolation
other,
largely
to showing the
than one might wish in a book devoted
disconnected
so firmly
cultures.
of Europe's
interconnectedness
Further,
by
literary
of
the
the
nation,
Benoit-Dusausoy
category
long-emphasized
bracketing
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488
and
NEW
Fontaine's
ends
volume
up
a
scanting
major
LITERARY
HISTORY
of much
ground
lit
often making
claims for the European
erary production,
exaggerated
of little-known
real sphere of activity and
importance
figures whose
was
influence
and Myth"
to
over
paper
local.
The
the
volume's
seem
sometimes
and works. And
authors
of
absence
thematic
substantial
any
even within
as
such
categories
"Woman
that can be applied
to be catchalls
connection
among
the relatively bounded
a blizzard of names
at need
far-flung
dimensions
of Europe,
the book often becomes
and passing
not
much
the
sheer
references,
always revealing
beyond
fact?certainly
worth knowing?that
there were Icelandic humanists
and Hungarian
a reader of the volume will be
symbolists.
Ideally
inspired to look into
some
unknown
previously
but
names,
the
of world
These
faces
literature
can
challenges
be
starts
often
book
from a history into an encyclopedia.
These problems all emerge with European
alone; a full history
literature
comparable
challenges
seen
in a recent
four-volume
on
over
to shade
a much
scale.
larger
collection,
Literary
History: Towards a Global Perspective}6 This was a project of a Scandinavian
whose
Council,
group funded by the Swedish Research
preparations
a vol
included
several meetings
and a large conference
that produced
ume of
a
of
the
members
and
group
range
position papers by
working
of foreign contributors.17 Anders
and their colleagues
envisioned
as
an
to non-Western
introduction
and,
as
second,
tion. Their
an
second
literary
of
exploration
first volume
the
cultures;
Pettersson
patterns
is devoted
volume
third and
fourth volumes
the adaptation
particularly
in Asia and Africa.
models
and Gunilla Lindberg-Wada
with a double focus: first,
their volumes
cultures
of
to concepts
discusses
several
for Western
contact
and
readers
transcultura
of literature
non-Western
look at interactions
and transformation
in different
the
genres;
in the modern
of European
world,
literary
a
its subtitle indicates,
the project
effort
represents
preliminary
a global
on
a
rather
than
full
perspective"
literary history,
scale version of such a history. The project's
two dozen
contributors
on
worked
and focused
extended
closely
together
primarily
writing
case studies,
the
of
thereby avoiding
problems
telegraphic
brevity and
seen in
and Fontaine's
disparity of purpose
Benoit-Dusausoy
European
Literary History. But the specificity of their case histories creates a sort of
As
"towards
of literature and genre
selective models
effect, outlining
stroboscopic
and illuminating
of cultural transformation,
rather
intriguing moments
than providing
the overall literary history proposed
the
title.
by
project's
The
fourth
volume's
the Ghanaian
in interaction;
Portuguese
essays,
for
example,
concern
the
following
topics:
in English; Amerindian
and European
narratives
in
Indian
modernism
under
literature;
hybridity
English
detective
rule; Communist-bloc
stories; Asian appropriations
novel
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A HISTORY
TOWARD
OF WORLD
489
LITERATURE
of European
theater; cross-cultural writing in Oman and the United Arab
in contemporary
Turkish children's
Emirates; and cultural encounters
literature. A concluding
At most, such
afterward discusses globalization.
a
a
a collection
rather
than
provides
typology,
history.
The collection's first volume, on notions of literature and literariness, is
more
on non-Western
concepts, chiefly
synoptic, but it focuses exclusively
the "major cultures" of China, Japan, and India, together with an
essay on classical Arabic poetics and two on African orature. Selective
at a cost of $475 for the set
though it is, at eleven hundred
pages?and
from
of four volumes from de Gruyter?the
Swedish group's project is prob
as
a
as
to be
about
ably
large
literary history should be if it is intended
consulted
from time to time. A history that would
read and not merely
include Europe and the Americas,
that would
include a broader range
of Asian
cultures, and that would give a fuller presentation
in a new way.
discussed will need to be constructed
of presentation
would need to meet a set of structural
and African
of the cultures
A new mode
to
challenges:
pages;
bring
ably
an
offer
effective
in
overview
a
number
manageable
of
to find ways to fill in the broad outline with case studies that can
to life; and to allow for use by readers with consider
the material
varied
levels
of
in a
interest
given
author,
genre,
area,
or
era.
Here
model
could well come in, enabling
the basic
the Wikipedia
to
into
via
of
nested
levels
greater depth and
history
expand
hyperlinks
a
be
Such
would
specificity.
project
significantly, though not only, Internet
based. Printed volumes have by no means
lost their usefulness
today, and
in particular
than merely nostalgic
students of literature
have a more
is where
to
attachment
the
book.
printed
On
its
the
own,
anarcho-syndicalist
the encyclopedic
and even the chaotic;
Wikipedia
a
an underlying
volume
would
valuable
anchor for the
provide
print
a
in itself
that
would
be
readable
overview
project, offering
manageable
model
while
also
serving
tends
toward
readers
as
the
portal
for
further
exploration.
A good model
for such a double enterprise
already exists, appropri
by scholars of the world's oldest literature. Over the past
ately developed
team based at Oxford has assembled
decade an international
the Elec
or ETCSL as it is known to
tronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature,
its small but devoted
of all known
orient.ox.ac.uk;
worldwide
Sumerian
the
and translations
following. Transcriptions
on
texts
be
found
its
site, www-etcsl.
may
literary
electronic
medium
allows
for
regular
updating
of
as new cuneiform
tablets and fragments are found
are
clarified. At the same time, the most important
and obscure passages
texts from the database are available
in a companion
printed volume,
The Literature of Ancient Sumer}* A comparable
dual format would work
well for a global literary history. A printed volume
(or two or three at
of specific
could give an overall history together with a modicum
most)
texts and translations
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490
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
site would
and case studies; the Web
then offer readers the
to
at
into
any
go
greater
depth
point. The print volume (s)
opportunity
could be written by a team of perhaps a dozen specialists
(the number
of
used
in
world
and
literature),
today's survey anthologies
commonly
as an editorial board
serve
to
could
then
and
review
they
proposals
examples
entries for the Web-based
site could have
expanded
history. The Web
to the print version, opening
out
various levels, the first corresponding
to other levels allowing readers to go further by region, country, genre,
could expand
in
The project
thematic
author, or various
categories.
in
and
its
contributors
whatever
whatever
detail,
directions,
desired,
the project and give it an
while the print version would serve to ground
overall
coherence.
Purpose
really, would be the point of writing a history of world literature?
Wikipedia
already allows readers to look up Sumerian poetry or Murasaki
is not yet as capacious
in
Shikibu, and if the site's entry on romanticism
as we might
its range of reference
like, that limitation could be solved
entries
(as the site readily al
simply by revising the existing Wikipedia
lows its users to do) to include the appropriate
Brazilians and Bengalis.
What,
There
would
be
no
sense
in
the
undertaking
arduous
of
project
writing
a full-scale history of world literature unless the project had a real value
in giving readers a new purchase on the dynamics of the world's
literary
not only informing
them but challenging
them to ask new
production,
and work in new ways. What might be the basis for a compel
questions
ling narrative of world literary history?
One way to approach
this question
is to put it differently: what would
such a history oppose? It seems tome that its prime targets would be two:
a
and a boundless,
nationalism
breathless
narrowly bounded
globalism.
that world literary history offers the national
traditions
opportunity
is something
better than their dissolution
into a globalized
hyperreality.
to combat the insistent
Equally, a global literary history could do much
of globalization,
and it could under
of so many discussions
presentism
score the
and continuing
of the local and the
longstanding
importance
national within the global. By opening up the longue dur?e of literary his
tory, a global history could reveal the broader systemic relations between
The
undertaking
been
always
Posnett
world
not
cultures,
literary
to
mixed
trace
world
opposing
the cocreation
in character,
had an important
literature
antedated
literature
of
at once
insight when
the modern
to national
systems
literary
and
localized
he realized
nation-state,
literatures
that
have
but
almost
translocal.
that a first form of
though
we
needn't
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A HISTORY
TOWARD
see literature
as moving
that Posnett
clan,
the
OF WORLD
in the orderly progression
of socioliterary
than a succession of the literatures
stages
of the
Rather
supposed.
the
city-state,
491
LITERATURE
and
empire,
the
a fuller
nation,
account
of world
literature would show that literary cultures have always been mixed phe
nomena
of several such levels. The world
impinged on the
comprised
of
the
before
the
creation
the
United Nations
nation
and
long
city-state
and
nations
and
subnational
and the International
Fund,
Monetary
as crucial venues of literary production
and
continue
reception
regions
and
"global" a work may be, it is sold in local markets
today. However
is primarily read by people who have been educated within a national
system.
a modern
In
in a real sense
adapts
and
a
continues
distance
even
work: Robert
American
contemporary
cultural
indeed,
translation,
a contemporary
even
idiom,
to challenge
an
text
ancient
Fagles's
becomes
Iliad adopts
as Homer's
and
temporal
the expectations
of
the
reader.19
contemporary
From the first, literature has been at once local and translocal. From
BCE onward, it has only rarely been the case that
the second millennium
a polity would
create its literature
in isolation from its neighbors
and
from
other,
more
distant
cultures.
In
the
ancient
Mediterranean
world,
a unique
in developing
Old Kingdom
script and
Egypt was exceptional
a
almost
that
within
that
literature
writing
entirely
developed
creating
and rarely being
influences
few foreign
system, apparently
absorbing
of the
read outside
the Nile Valley. Far more
typical was the experience
in
3100
BCE
the
Sumerians
south
around
cuneiform
by
script developed
ern Mesopotamia.
Their culture was rapidly subsumed by the powerful
cities
of Akkad
and
its allies;
as Akkadian
became
the
region's
dominant
use in Akkadian
and other
language,
script was adapted to
Crescent.
and
the
Fertile
Babylonian
languages throughout Mesopotamia
as a bilingual
literature developed
system
during the second millennium
the city-states and
in a single script, which spread throughout
grounded
the Sumerian
empires
of
southern
and
northern
Mesopotamia,
eastward
into
Persia,
and the Levant.
and then to Anatolia
the
In all these localities, written
began within
literary production
their
trained
both
in
scribes
written
realm of an international
by
script,
own language and in Sumerian, which remained
the basis for cuneiform
had ceased to have any independent
literacy long after the Sumerians
was
studied for centuries after it had ceased
existence.
Indeed, Sumerian
as
its link to
to be a spoken language, much
literary Latin long outlasted
I have come to think of as the cunei
the life of a specific people. What
the
form scriptworld thus became the matrix within which there emerged
individual literatures of Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Ugarit, and the Hittite
not forever retain its splendid isolation from
empire.20 Even Egypt could
in time, hieroglyphics'
what can be called the Near Eastern world-system;
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492
NEW7 LITERARY
HISTORY
gave birth to the West Semitic alphabetic
script that
on
to
Near
the
East
and
eventu
Greece
and
Rome,
spread throughout
to
dethrone
in
itself.
Over
the
time,
ally returning
hieroglyphics
Egypt
evolved
into
several
distinct
of
alphabet
scriptworlds
increasingly global
reach?the
the Arabic, and the Cyrillic?and,
in country after
Roman,
to
literature
first
written
in
context of a
be
the
broader
country,
began
and
its
world.
script
A comparable
story could be told of the invention of writing during
the Shang dynasty, after which the system spread throughout what came
to be known as China; for many centuries,
so
China was not a nation
as a conglomeration
much
of languages
and polities,
linked (even in
divided
times such as the Warring
States period)
through the medium
of a single script and its literary culture. The spread of the Chinese
characters to Korea, Japan, Vietnam,
and elsewhere further extended
the
that
the
had
from
had
the
earliest
presence
translinguistic
script
period
of what we would now label the writing of literature.
If literature has always already been international,
it remains
ineluc
in
national
world.
Even
such
tably
today's global
far-flung
languages,
as Arabic,
are
and
inflected
and
have
English,
Spanish,
locally
regional
centers of publication
and distribution.
"Global" writers such as Rushdie,
hieratic
shorthand
Derek Walcott,
may themselves
these
divide
remains
authors
engages
and Orhan
with
principally
their
Pamuk may be read in many countries
and
time between differing
each
of
locales, yet
connected
closely
one
or two new
to his
even
homeland,
countries,
in ways
not
as
he
ultimately
different
from Apuleius's movements
to Athens,
from Madauros
then to
to
and
North
home
Africa.
their
reader
Rome,
finally
Equally,
far-flung
of readers in many distinct localities. Pamuk's Turkish
ship is comprised
novel
enters
Kar
into
new
relations
a national
with
culture
whenever
a bookseller
in Barcelona
stocks Nieve, a student in Berlin
is assigned
a
or
Los
book
club
re
discusses
Snow.
Local
differences
Schnee,
Angeles
as well: readers in Catalonia will have a different
tain their importance
take on Pamuk's cross-cultural
themes than will readers inMadrid, while
snow itself has a
foreignness
readers
in Los Angeles
that itwould
not possess
for
in Wisconsin.
and even multiple
nature, literature provides a prime case
of the simultaneous
of the global and globalization
localization
of the
local. As Wallerstein
himself has remarked,
"the history of the world has
been the very opposite of a trend towards cultural
it has
homogenization;
In its double
rather
tion,
better
been
or
a trend
cultural
studied
towards
complexity."21
cultural
Nowhere
differentiation,
are
such
or
complex
cultural
elabora
elaborations
in world literature, today as throughout
its history.
To look beyond
the nation
our mode of historical
involves modifying
analysis as well as our view of the objects we study. We will not always be
than
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A HISTORY
TOWARD
OF WORLD
493
LITERATURE
we
able to find genetic
links or influences among the varied phenomena
are
we
at
the
of
the
whether
examine,
looking
origins
writing,
growth of
scribal cultures in court and temple circles, the history of prose fiction,
or the processes
of transculturation,
all of which have occurred
differ
in
times
and
This
is one
however,
very difference,
ently
differing
places.
of the study of world
of the great advantages
literary history. All too
or the Sanskrit
often, histories of "the rise of the novel," or romanticism,
as
a
have
culture's
range of choices was
kavya
proceeded
though
given
the only one possible. Just because
the monogatari
and the Arthurian
romance
were written
in separate literary cultures,
the study of either
can benefit by an awareness of what was possible elsewhere
in the
world at that time. Moli?re never heard of his contemporary
Chikamatsu
but he and the great Japanese dramatist were both writing
Mon'zaemon,
to the rise of a middle-class
that
commercial
culture in
plays
responded
form
an
aristocratic
and
milieu,
their
are
works
on
comparable
levels.
many
is the son of a cloth merchant,
while
bourgeois
gentilhomme
a
at
Love
Suicides
the hero of Chikamatsu's
Amijima is paper merchant;
both plays' protagonists
fall in love beyond
their station in life, and
both are forced to confront
the limits of social mobility
that their own
Moli?re's
families will allow. Both playwrights
revolutionized
popular art forms to
a
new
to
dramatic
and
their plays are mark
give
depth
representation,
edly
metatheatrical,
identity
gentilhomme,
in
their
earlier
relations
and
as
costume
and
acting
for
metaphors
social
Love Suicides at Amijima as in Le Bourgeois
describe
themselves as feeling like actors
time?in
characters
unfamiliar
Parallel
for
using
in an unstable
directly
roles.
alternative
periods.
possible
so
Doing
within
are
histories
a
can
single
also
not
help
region
and
only
attune
even
important
us
to the
a
single
recover
to
varieties
nation.
of
Far
too many
British literature have seen the period from
studies of modern
the rubric of modernism,
1900-1930
almost entirely under
discussing
to seem) modernists,
writers who were (or could be made
while sidelin
ing
almost
everyone
else.
Forced
to
abandon
the
narrative
of
organic
and linear progress, the history of world literature opens out
connectivity
as well.
that are locally applicable
alternative modes
of understanding
a
to
in
thanks
Moli?re
and Chikamatsu
have
deal
common,
prove
good
to comparable
in distant regions not yet subsumable
social developments
under a unified global system; conversely, Virginia Woolf
and Arnold
to say to each other on the rare occasions when
had nothing
account of modern
A three-dimensional
couldn't
avoid meeting.
they
as
come to terms with
must
of modern
British literature,
world drama,
as attuned to
a wide range of interrelations
and nonrelations,
becoming
as
to the discordia concors
and Chikamatsu
the concordia discors of Moli?re
and Mrs. Woolf.
of Mr. Bennett
Bennett
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494
NEW
LITERARY
HISTORY
A global history of world literature will allow us to situate our particular
interests within
the larger frame of the world's
Far
literary production.
from ceasing to be important
of
national
literatures
will
subjects
study,
be seen in new ways, as will the individual authors who work within and
across
the salutary
study of world literature can thus extend
on
over
has
criticism
had
the
literary theory
past several
even
As Northrop
in
observed
scholars
when
focus
1957,
Frye
them. The
effects
that
decades.
on an individual
that the thing they contribute
work, "it is not necessary
to should be invisible, as the coral island is invisible to the
polyp."22 The
scholarly ecologist may very well study a local cluster of polyps, but it is
well to be aware of their place in the surrounding
atoll, and then of the
in the broader
atoll's position
literature worth writing
world
our
in
work
the wider
A history of
ecosystem of its archipelago.
will provide an invaluable map to locate
world.
Columbia
University
NOTES
1
Ian Watt,
The Rise of theNovel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson,
and Fielding
and
(Berkeley
Los Angeles:
Univ. of California
Press,
1957).
Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History
2
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press,
1987).
3
Ernst Robert
R.
Curtius,
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard
Trask
Univ. Press, 1953); Erich Auerbach,
Mimesis: The Representa
(Princeton,
NJ: Princeton
tion of Reality in Western Literature,
trans. Willard
R. Trask
Univ.
(Princeton,
NJ: Princeton
Press,
1953).
4
et al., eds., The HarperCollins
World Reader,
Mary Ann Caws, Christopher
Prendergast
2 vols.
et al., eds., The Norton Anthology
Mack
(New York: HarperCollins,
1994); Maynard
World
vols.
York:
6
ed.,
Norton,
(New
1995).
of
Masterpieces,
expanded
5
Bruce Mazlish,
The New Global History
(New York: Routledge,
2006).
von Goethe,
6
trans. John Oxenford
Conversations with Eckermann,
(San
Johann Wolfgang
Francisco:
North
132.
Point,
1984),
7
Arouet
de Voltaire,
et contes, ed. Ren?
Candide ou l'optimisme, in Romans
Fran?ois-Marie
as Candid: Or, All
Pomeau
Translated
(Paris: Garnier,
1966), 179-259.
for the Best (London:
J. Nourse,
8
Hans
(Munich:
1759).
Jakob
Christoffel
Goldmann,
von Grimmeishausen,
Der Abenteuerlicher
Translated
Schulz-Behrend
by George
1964).
(Columbia,
Simplicius Simplicissimus
9
Hutcheson
Posnett,
Macaulay
SC: Camden
Comparative
House,
Literature
Simplicius Simplicissimus
as The Adventures
of
1993).
(1886;
repr. New
York: Johnson
1970).
Reprint,
10 Apuleius,
Metamorphoses,
ed. and trans. J. Arthur Hanson,
MA:
2 vols.
(Cambridge,
cited in text).
Press, 1989), 44 (hereafter
11 H. G. Wells,
The Outline ofHistory: Being a Plain History
(New York:
of Life and Mankind
A Study ofHistory,
Univ.
12 vols. (London: Oxford
Macmillan,
1927); Arnold
J. Toynbee,
Press,
1934-61).
on World Literature," New
12 Franco Moretti,
"Conjectures
Left Review 1 (January-February
2000): 57 (Moretti's
emphases).
Harvard
Univ.
This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Fri, 09 Oct 2015 22:37:07 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
TOWARD
A HISTORY
OF WORLD
13 Moretti,
ed., // Romanzo,
Univ. Press, 2006).
Princeton
5 vols.
LITERATURE
495
(Turin:
The Novel,
14 Marcel Cornis-Pope
and John Neubauer,
in the 19th
and Disjunctures
Europe: functures
and Djelal Kadir, eds.,
2004); Mario J. Vald?s
Univ.
tiveHistory,
3 vols. (New York: Oxford
2001-3);
2 vols.
(Princeton,
NJ:
eds., History of theLiterary Cultures ofEast-Central
and 20th Centuries
(New York: J. Benjamins,
Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Compara
Press, 2004).
trans.
and Guy Fontaine,
eds., History
Benoit-Dusausoy
of European Literature,
Michael Woolf
2000), xxvii.
(London:
Routledge,
16 Anders
Pettersson,
ed., Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective, 4 vols. (Berlin: de
15 Annick
2006).
Gruyter,
17 Gunilla
Lindberg-Wada,
ed., Studying
Trans cultural Literary History
(Berlin:
de Gruyter,
2006).
18 Jeremy
Univ. Press, 2004).
Black, ed., The Literature of Ancient Sumer (Oxford: Oxford
The Iliad, trans. Robert
19 Homer,
(New York: Viking,
1990).
Fagles
of World
Litera
20 David Damrosch,
Systems and the Formation
"Scriptworlds: Writing
195-219.
ture," Modern Language
Quarterly, 68, no. 2 (2007):
Immanuel Wallerstein,
Can There Be Such a Thing
"The National
and the Universal:
21
asWorld
in Culture, Globalization,
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