In the World Republic of Letters: Towards a Reconceptualisation of the Notion of Weltliteratur

Abstract

The paper problematises the origins, characteristics, and implications of the term Weltliteratur, proffering critical insights into its interdisciplinary, transnational character and presuppositions about its discontinuous development. Having been initially conceptualised as a heretofore undeveloped research area, the domain of “world literature” is first eulogised as worthy of further scholarly attention by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the late 1820s – the time of political unrest and multiple socio-cultural changes. As such, the idea also seems to have been of paramount interest to the ancients (H. M. Posnett), in which sense it may be portrayed as borderline anachronistic. Conversely, it does possess and evoke great resonance in future writers, thinkers, and intellectuals alike, resulting in its many reconceptualisations, not only in the field of literary studies but also in numerous nascent or still-developing disciplines such as comparative literature, genology, translation criticism, hermeneutics, cultural studies; furthermore, it is equally relevant for a number of various thematic poetics. Engaging in a dialogue with Reinhart Koselleck’s “conceptual history” alongside its highly idiosyncratic theoretical apparatus, the present paper adapts and reappropriates Koselleck’s nomenclature with a view towards a preliminary systematisation of anticipatory mechanisms which influenced the reception of the category of Weltliteratur as much as they governed its subsequent re-development, be it in academia or in twentieth- and twenty-first-century public discourse. In this sense, Goethe’s prescient analysis of various national literatures as well as of the heterogeneity of artistic discourses of his time may be said to have laid the foundations for new comparative research methodologies, and, by extension, to what Pascale Casanova would eventually name as “the world republic of letters.”