The birth of world literature

Professor Martin Puchner explores how the concept of World Literature came into being, describing the conversations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Peter Eckermann.

From our free online course, “Masterpieces of World Literature”:


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[krispolidano]

Actually, Goethe wasn't the first person to coin the term "world literature", its birth preceded but was propelled by him

[interestingly.literature]

I thought he was going to mention how Goethe was addressing how he could put German literature in comparison with British and French literature. He had the idea that different languages didn't ’t mean countries had different norms. Which, of course, it had changed in North America later.

[dilbyjones]

its impossibly hard to get this stuff to come up in my feed.

[DesmoProfundis]

Wow, so... the story of the birth of Word Literature is also a story of ADHD? This has suddenly become more relatable than I would have expected. Oh, hang on... I think I hear a sledge outside. Nope, just a squirrel.

[bellow]

Lol the birth of world literature was like 1 minute and the rest of that afternoon was about the sledges. ADHD indeed these people

[cicciopasticcio]

the world literatures birt is not 1800 is 4000 or7000 years old