What Is World Literature?

Citation

Damrosch, D. (2003). What Is World Literature? Princeton University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book is a monograph of about 320 pages, built from an Introduction, nine chapters in three parts (Circulation, Translation, Production) and a Conclusion, followed by a bibliography and an index. The publisher describes it as "both an essay in definition and a series of cautionary tales", argued largely by example and through close readings. Its starting point is the observation that world literature was long understood in North America as a canon of European masterpieces, a view challenged by a global perspective. Damrosch replaces the canon with a process: world literature is "a mode of circulation and of reading", made up of works that gain in translation as they move into an elliptical space between the source culture and the receiving one. The case studies range, in the publisher's words, from the Sumerians to the Aztecs and from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction, and they also show how editors and translators have distorted foreign works to suit their own needs.

Introduction: Goethe Coins a Phrase

A substantial opening (about 35 pages) that begins from Goethe's term Weltliteratur; Goethe and his interlocutor Eckermann are among the book's most frequent names. Heather O'Dea's review in Cadernos de Tradução notes that the book opens with the passage from Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto on the rise of a world literature out of national literatures.

Chapter 1: Gilgamesh's Quest

Part I (Circulation) opens with the rediscovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century and the shaping of the text by those who recovered, edited and translated it; the publisher names the rediscovered epic as one example of works distorted by their editors' immediate needs. The excavators and scholars Layard, Rassam and Smith, and Nineveh, are among the book's frequent terms.

Chapter 2: The Pope's Blowgun

The publisher names the Aztecs among the book's case studies, and the book's frequent terms for that material (Nahuatl, the Cantares Mexicanos, Sahagún) belong to this chapter on Aztec poetry and its transmission.

Chapter 3: From the Old World to the Whole World

The chapter on the canon and its expansion: anthologies, masterpieces and the "Western Canon" are recurring terms in the book, in line with the publisher's account of the move from a European canon to a global one.

Chapter 4: Love in the Necropolis

Part II (Translation) begins with ancient Egyptian love poetry (Egypt, papyrus and Amun are among the book's frequent terms) as a test of what translation can carry across.

Chapter 5: The Afterlife of Mechthild von Magdeburg

The medieval mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg and the later life of her writing in other languages and times.

Chapter 6: Kafka Comes Home

Kafka is the modern case in the part on translation; the title suggests a study of how his work, after circulating abroad, is received again in its places of origin.

Chapter 7: English in the World

Part III (Production) turns to literature produced in English for a world readership; P. G. Wodehouse and Blandings Castle figure prominently among the book's frequent terms.

Chapter 8: Rigoberta Menchú in Print

The testimonial writing of the Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú and how it has been edited and presented in print, an example the publisher singles out for distortion by editors and translators.

Chapter 9: The Poisoned Book

Postmodern metafiction: the frequent terms Pavić, Khazars and Serbian point to Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars.

Conclusion: World Enough and Time

According to O'Dea's review, the Conclusion draws the book's argument into a threefold definition: world literature is an elliptical refraction of national literatures (a work keeps two foci, one in its original culture and one in the host culture); it is writing that gains in translation, unlike texts that lose too much in translation to circulate beyond their own language; and it is not a set canon of texts but a mode of reading, a detached engagement with worlds beyond the reader's own place and time.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Conclusion

• Weltliteratur: Goethe's term, the book's starting point.
• Elliptical refraction: a work of world literature has two foci, its source culture and its receiving culture, and is shaped by both.
• Writing that gains in translation: works that grow in significance as they circulate, as opposed to those that lose too much.
• A mode of reading: world literature as a way of reading rather than a fixed list of texts.

Part I: Circulation (Chapters 1–3)

• Circulation: how works move out of their culture of origin and enter others.
• Canon and anthology: the European canon of masterpieces and its widening into a global one.

Part II: Translation (Chapters 4–6)

• Translation as transformation: what is kept, lost or gained when a work moves into another language.

Part III: Production (Chapters 7–9)

• Production for a world audience: works shaped from the start by international circulation, from English-language fiction to testimonial writing and postmodern metafiction.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear, influential definition. The threefold definition in the Conclusion gives students a precise vocabulary for the field. The publisher presented it as the first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature.
• Argued through case studies. Each chapter studies a particular work and its history of editing, translation or reception, and the publisher stresses the book's close readings. The chapters can be read singly as models of how to write about a work's circulation.
• Wide historical range. From Sumerian epic and Egyptian poetry to Kafka, Wodehouse and Pavić, the examples show that world literature is not only a modern phenomenon.
• Attention to mediation. The cautionary tales about editors and translators make students alert to the anthologies and translations through which they read.

Limitations

• Demanding range of reference. O'Dea, while calling the theories interesting, warns that readers may find the author's vast knowledge daunting and that some examples can seem off topic without a background in world literature.
• Not a survey. The book covers a small number of chosen cases rather than offering a history or overview of world literature, so it does not replace an anthology or an introduction to comparative literature.
• Dated in places. Published in 2003, it does not engage with the later debate over its definition; those responses need to be read separately.

Where It Fits in the Course

Damrosch is the course's central statement of the circulation-and-reading approach to world literature. Ben Hutchinson's Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction is a good first reading on the discipline from which world literature emerged; Domínguez, Saussy and Villanueva's Introducing Comparative Literature places the field within debates on globalization and cosmopolitanism and sets out its theoretical positions, including world literature.

Pascale Casanova's The World Republic of Letters is the natural counterpart to Damrosch: where Damrosch stresses how works gain as they circulate, Casanova describes a competitive international field with centres and peripheries. Reading the two together makes a useful pairing for discussion. Auerbach's Mimesis shows the older, Europe-centred model of comparative close reading, and The Norton Anthology of World Literature supplies the texts in translation that Damrosch's argument asks students to read with awareness of their mediation.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in world or comparative literature who have some experience of reading literature in translation and writing literary essays; no foreign languages or theory background is required.

A practical approach:

• Read the Introduction and the Conclusion first. Together they state the question and the answer; with the threefold definition in mind, each chapter reads as a test case.
• Then choose chapters by interest or by the course's set texts. The chapters are self-contained studies; each part offers a different angle on the definition (circulation, translation, production).
• Read a work alongside its chapter. For example, read Gilgamesh in translation with Chapter 1 or a Kafka story with Chapter 6, and compare the translations or editions available.
• Apply the method to a text of your own choice. The book's case studies are a model for an essay that traces how one work has been edited, translated and read outside its culture of origin.
• Pair it with Casanova for a debate on how world literature works.