World Literature

World Literature is the circulation of national literatures beyond their national borders. It is the field of study that comparative literature investigates.

This definition makes it clear that World Literature and Comparative Literature are very close in nature. 

In her article "The Uses and Abuses of World Literature", Kate McInturff first defined World Literature by distinguishing it from Comparative Literature: 

This article is part of a current debate about the definitions of and differences between Compara- tive Literature and World Literature. However, the two terms were often used interchangeably in the nineteenth century. Even today, critics in both Comparative Literature and World Literature almost invariably cite Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur as a common foundation for their fields. A distinction can be made between a sphere of common cultural influence—a literature of the world—and a comparison of distinctive cultural spheres—a comparison of literatures. P225

While Comparative Literature is about the differences, World Literature is about the commonalities between all national literatures. It is concerned with that which is universal and common to all literatures.

Second, McInturff identified the core debate or a core tension in World Literature:

The tension between national and cosmopolitan interests is a common thread in these discussions—one that has its roots in the early formation of the field(s) P225 

World Literature, in its aspiration for universality, is composed of national literatures. This implies that World Literature is composed of two contradictory components, the national and the cosmopolitan (the universal / the international), which causes an inner tension within discussions about World Literature.

Third, McInturff exposed the different definitions that different scholars has attributed to World Literature based on that inner tension between the national and the cosmopolitan. Some scholars maintained a balance in their use of World Literature. Some others did not maintain the balance between the two contradictory components of world literature which caused them to misuse and abuse World Literature. Other scholars tried to restore the balance by correcting the abuse made to World Literature. 

1 Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe:

‘National literature does not mean much at present, it is time for the era of world literature and everybody must endeavor to accelerate this epoch’ P225

‘it is not a matter of nations being obliged to think in unison; rather, they should become aware of and understand each other, and, if love proves impossible, they should at least learn to tolerate one another’ P225

While Goethe emphasizes the productive possibilities of an international community of writers and readers, he does so with the understanding that national identifications are still powerful. It is, in part, as a result of violent conflicts between nations that World Literature becomes possible. P225

Idealistically speaking, Goethe's views demonstrate a balance between the national and the cosmopolitan. While Goethe is the main figure in World Literature, he is not the first to have reflected about World Literature. However, his name is strongly linked to the concept of World Literature because he is the one to have developed it more than any of his predecessors. Even today World Literature is attributed to Goethe. It is Goethe's Weltliteratur. 

2 Frederich Schlegel: (balance)

Schlegel, like Goethe, acknowledges the power of popular investments in national literature. Schlegel’s formulation of literature in the interna- tional realm, in contrast to Goethe’s, emphasizes the status conferred to national literature through its contributions to World Literature. P225 

In Schlegel, World Literature does not lead to a dissolution of national boundaries as much as it leads to better relations at the border. P225

3 Johann Gottfreid Herder: (balance)

‘‘Goethe first described world literature as cross-cultural reception inside an evolving world history, a concept he (and others) found already developed by Johann Gottfreid Herder’’P226 

Herder emphasizes both the unity of humanity and the importance of national ‘‘climate’’ and character. P226

He argues for the fundamental importance of ‘‘climate’’ on the development of the distinctive cultures and languages that define communities as nations (284). Climate, for Herder, is not only literally the weather, but also the geographic terrain and the political and intellectual trends of the period.2 Thus, for Herder, the nation is the product of a chthonic relationship between a people and the climate they inhabit. The nation is also the product of the encounter of one community with others, over time. P226

The nation is both a group united by its relationship to its place, and also a product of heterogeneous influences—of ‘‘circumstances and occasions.’’ As Robert Young puts it, ‘‘Herder therefore speaks with a forked tongue: offering on the one hand rootedness, the organic unity of a people and their local, traditional culture, but also on the other hand the cultural education of the human race whereby the achievements of one culture are grafted on to another’’ P226-7

   

4 Matthew Arnold: (Abuse: world literature is limited to the contribution of western national literatures to the world. Western masterpieces earned the status of universality)

Arnold’s comments draw out a particular critical paradox. This paradox derives from a desire to affirm the value of the nation’s literary contributions in comparison with that of other nations, while maintaining that this affirmation is an objective one. P227

In Arnold, we find again the simultaneous emphasis on the unity of humanity and a recognition of distinctive differences be- tween cultures; contact with other cultures is productive precisely because those cultures are in some way unique. Arnold defines culture as the product of the dialectic of two racial strains: Hellenism and Hebraism. Arnold writes: ‘‘Science has now made visible to everybody the great and pregnant elements of difference which lie in race, and in how signal a manner they make the genius and history of an Indo-European people vary from those of a Semitic people. P227

National contributions to World Literature help to define that nation as civilized. The influence of one nation’s literature on others helps to define the nation’s capacity to civilize. P228

5 Edward Said: (Restoring the balance)

In Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, Said argues that European scholars generated a definition of European identity in relation to an image of an Oriental identity. However, in the arena of Comparative and World Literatures, the self and the other are more often both European. This is not to deny the power and scope of European readings of non-European cultures, but rather to claim that Europe itself was conceived of as a competitive-comparative realm. 

6 Richard Moulton: (Abuse)

In Moulton’s work, the national perspective of the critic is not elided. He writes in 1911, ‘‘I take a distinction between Universal Literature and World Literature. Universal Literature can only mean the sum total of all literatures. World Literature, as I use this term, is this Universal Literature seen in perspective from a given point of view, presumably the national standpoint of the observer’’ (Moulton 6). While clearly influenced by Matthew Arnold, Moulton makes a virtue rather than a vice of the national perspective point of the critic. What becomes clearer over the course of Moulton’s writing is that some national perspectives bring greater enlightenment than others. P232  

‘‘World Literature is the Autobiography of Civilisation’’ P232

7 Homi Bhabha: (Restoring the balance)

The study of world literature might be the study of the way in which cultures recognize themselves through their projections of ‘‘otherness.’’ Where the transmission of ‘‘national’’ traditions was once the major theme of a world literature perhaps we can now suggest that transnational histories of migrants, the colonized, or political refu- gees—these border and frontier conditions— may be the terrains of World Literature. The center of such a study would neither be the ‘‘sovereignty’’ of national cultures, nor the ‘‘universalism’’ of human culture, but a focus on those ‘‘freak displacements’’ . . . that have been caused within cultural lives of postcolonial societies. (‘‘The World and the Home’’ 146) P233


Bhabha’s World Literature is rather the defense of the migrant or, as he has written elsewhere, ‘‘culture’s in between,’’ against the nation’s self-declared centers. It is what Djelal Kadir has aptly termed a ‘‘hinternational’’ literature (245). P234

For Homi Bhabha, because the geopolitics of the world is different, so must be the tension or the debate in World Literature. It is not about the national vs. the universal any longer but rather about displaced cultures or cultures in between vs. self declared centers.