Program Area World Literature

Currently, the concept of world literature is at the center of an international debate on “global literatures,” a term understood primarily as denoting a contemporary literature that is no longer organized along national lines. In literary studies, tthis mainly led to scholars abandoning the practice of comparing distinct national literatures differentiated by language. Now, the task is to analyze the histories of entanglement and separation of literatures and their environments. In addition to the oft-emphasized Eurocentric implications of the old concept of world literature, as coined by Goethe, there have been attempts to mobilize the concept against the collateral damage of globalization, thus positively linking it to its cosmopolitan tradition. The concept of “world culture” as currently favored in many places seeks both to describe a world changed by globalization and to intervene critically. For example, UNESCO’s World Heritage program works towards a kind of normal distribution of the cultural heritage of humanity.

However, the concept of world literature is not limited to its current meaning. It also implies broader historical and systematic contexts. It is part of a series of other compounds with “world” that have become important in the modern era. The Copernican Revolution questioned the cosmos, modern science disputed the order of creation, and revolution challenged the political order. World concepts attempt to address the whole of a reality that, in its abstraction, is increasingly difficult to grasp and describe. In the “secularized” world of modernity, reality, and humanity’s position within it become a problem. As a result, scientific models of the world and pre-scientific worldviews are increasingly drifting apart. The “worldviews” of the 19th and 20th centuries often refer to pre-modern forms to allow for some form of orientation. Mythical images and narratives of origins and the end of time begin to resurface. Religious symbols and practices become attractive again in the context of national memory. Such ideological orientations are not simply a regression to outdated worldviews. They are rather the result of complex dynamics in which old and new patterns of interpretation intertwine. This becomes particularly virulent in situations of crisis, such as the current debates about the borders of Europe, which are marked both by the loss of the self-evident concept of the nation and by the legacies of the great empires of Eastern Europe.

Only as specific forms of thought in specific media formats can the history of world concepts be explored. Since worldviews rely on myths and metaphors, narratives and rhetoric, the study of literature is a particularly important approach. Literature has often been expected to provide orientation through education in a changing world. Although this has become questionable, it is certainly not the only function of literature. When it observes and critically reflects different interpretive patterns of observing the world, literature becomes its own world-shaping mode. This is precisely what the concept of world literature should keep present in cultural studies research into past and future models of the world.

Current Research Projects

Projects of this program area, completed or processed in the past

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