World Citizenship and Weltliteratur: Revisiting the Origins of Comparative Literature

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to reunite the concepts of Weltliteratur and Weltbürgertum in order to propose new foundations in the revision of the origins of Comparative Literature and the present need for it. The relationship between Kantian Cosmopolitanism, Herderian Universalism, and the Goethian idea of Weltliteratur must be read again not only as a background of the current debates on Globalization and Literature as the frame of a new Comparative Literature, but also as an appreciation of Goethe’s ideals as a late intervention in the Kant-Herder debate, a proposal in the emergence of national literature in the nineteenth century, and an attempt to create a new cultural frame: European literature. In this sense, the article highlights Goethe as reader of the French journal Le Globe in order to review the origins of Weltliteratur and the meaning of Europe in Goethe’s later work.