A World History of Literature [antikvár]

TOWARDS A NON-EUROCENTRIC WORLD HISTORY OF LITERATURE Anders Pettersson Theo D'haen Umeâ and Leuven Abstract The two authors of this article form part of an international group of scholars who are working on a four-volume world history of literature in English, Literature: A World History. In this article we offer a brief description of the background of the project and the general ideas behind it, and also say a few words about the account of European literature in Literature: A World History, an account for which we will be jointly responsible.1 I Literary history in the modern sense of the term originated around the turn of the nineteenth century. Literary historians have occupied themselves primarily with the literature of their own nation, but transnational and transcultural literary histories also came to be written relatively early, with Germany leading the way. Early examples are Friedrich Schlegel's history of European literature, Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern; 1812, 1815)2, and Karl Rosenkranz's Handbuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Poesie (Handbook of a General History of Poetry; 1832-33), encompassing both poetry and prose and including Indian literature - with some justification, Rosenkranz's work can be regarded as the first world history of literature. World histories of literature abound in the later nineteenth century, and they have continued to be written up to the present. The genre has had a particularly strong presence in the German-speaking world, but there are also important specimens in Russian, French, Italian, and in Scandinavian languages. Three contemporary examples are the German Neues Handbuch der 1 The authors of this article, and the editor of the present volume, are grateful to the publisher and editors of the volume in which this article first appeared as: "Towards a non-Eurocentric History of World Literature," Marc Maufort & Caroline De Wagter, eds. Old Margins and New Centres: The European Literary Heritage in an Age of Globalization/Anciennes Margeste Nouveaux Centres: L'héritage littéraire européen dans une ere de globalisation, Brussels, Bern, etc.: Peter Lang, 2011, 43-56. The present arcticle summarily sketches the framework for the contributions following. 2 Friedrich Schlegel's work is based on a series of lectures that he held in Vienna in 1812. It was published, in two volumes, in Vienna in 1815 "bey Karl Schaumburg und Compagnie". (Eichner xviii.)