E-Book Overview
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?
E-Book Content
German Literature as World Literature
German Literature as Literature Edited by Thomas O. Beebee
BLOOMSBURY NEW YORK" LONDON" NEW DELHI" SYDNEY
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First published 2014
© Thomas Oliver Beebee, 2014 Ali rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
Ubrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Pll.Iblication Data German literature as world literature / edited by Thomas Oliver Beebee. pages cm Includes bibliographieal referenees and index. ISBN 978-1-62356-391-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. German literature-Appreciation. 2. German literature-History and criticism. 3. Literature-History and criticism. 1. Beebee, Thomas O. editor of compilation. PT115.G482014 830.9-dc23 2014006616 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6391-2 e Pub: 978-1-6235-6053-9 ePDF: 978-1-6235-6189-5 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Contributors
vii
Acknowledgments
xi
A Note on the Text
xii
Introduction: Departures, Emanations, Intersections Part 1
Thomas O. Beebee
Goethe's Weltliteratur/World Literature
Reading Goethe's Elective Affinities (Die Wahlverwandtschaften) through Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone (Hong Lou Meng): Immanent Divinity, Vegetative Femininity, and the Mood of Transience 2
Part 2
Daniel Purdy
43
AusstrahlungenlEmanations
Between Political Engagement and Political Unconscious: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Slavic East<