World Literary Histories as Rewritings of World Historiography

Abstract

This essay approaches the question of rewriting world civilization through a sub-set of civilizational history, namely the historiography of world literature. I will use the changing conceptions of world literature to track a change of emphasis on what matters in world civilization. My presentation is in three parts: a discussion of the nature of history, of literature, and of world literature; a comparison of two nineteenth-century German histories of world literature; and a comparison of two twenty-first century histories of world literature.