German Literature As World Literature

Features

Description

This new collection investigates German literature in its international dimensions. While no single volume can deal comprehensively with such a vast topic, the nine contributors cover a wide historical range, with a variety of approaches and authors represented. Together, the essays begin to adumbrate the systematic nature of the relations between German national literature and world literature as these have developed through institutions, cultural networks, and individual authors.

In the last two decades, discussions of world literature-literature that resonates beyond its original linguistic and cultural contexts-have come increasingly to the forefront of theoretical investigations of literature. One reason for the explosion of world literature theory, pedagogy and methodology is the difficulty of accomplishing either world literature criticism, or world literary history.

The capaciousness, as well as the polylingual and multicultural features of world literature present formidable obstacles to its study, and call for a collaborative approach that conjoins a variety of expertise. To that end, this collection contributes to the critical study of world literature in its textual, institutional, and translatorial reality, while at the same time highlighting a question that has hitherto received insufficient scholarly attention: what is the relation between national and world literatures, or, more specifically, in what senses do national literatures systematically participate in (or resist) world literature?

Review: Thomas O. Beebee's volume with new studies by leading scholars on the interrelation between German and World Literature is a most welcome contribution to contemporary discussions on the trans-national dimension of cultures. The essays show how 'national literatures are elliptical refractions of world literature' and that German literature has been imbricated in other cultural traditions.

Hopefully other experts of national literatures feel inspired to come up with similarly insightful publications. -- Paul Michael Lutzeler, Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Max Kade Center for Contemporary German Literature, Washington University in St.

Louis, USA For far too long, the only role that the German tradition has played in the flourishing discussions surrounding world literature is to have given the field its name. The present volume corrects this deficit and shows how German literature interacts with the world at large. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the future of German studies in the twenty-first century!

Tobias Boes, Associate Professor of German Language and Literature, University of Notre Dame, USA