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  • The Idea of World Literature: History and Pedagogical Practice
  • B. Venkat Mani
The Idea of World Literature: History and Pedagogical Practice. By John Pizer. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. x + 190 pages. $39.95.

The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed a resurgence of discussions around the term "World Literature." A number of volumes have been published just in the last five years: Pascale Casanova's The World Republic of Letters (2003), David Dam rosch's What is World Literature (2003), Christopher Prendergast's anthology Debating World Literature (2004), to name just a few. Casanova explores the international space of literary activity; Damrosch traces the elliptical trajectory of works of literature in translation that takes them beyond national/regional points of origin; Prendergast and contributors discuss the specific local implications of these debates and their efficacies for various linguistic traditions. More recently, in the encyclopedic two-volume study The Novel (2007), Franco Moretti (editor) and the contributors [End Page 616] have attempted to 'map' the genre out of national traditions, into the larger context of World Literature.

John Pizer's The Idea of World Literature is a timely and significant—albeit comparatively brief—contribution to these discussions and debates. This study distinguishes itself from the others in three central ways: first, through its focused examination of the history of origin and development of the term Weltliteratur in Germany from the early to late 19th century and into the 20th century; second, through its detailed exploration of the transatlantic afterlife of the term as "World Literature" in the US academy starting with the late 19th century; and finally through its discussion of the relevance of these traditions and debates for contemporary pedagogical practices. This combination is the most conspicuous achievement of Pizer's book: apart from pursuing a transnational and transhistorical investigation of the term, Pizer aims to provide academic practitioners—teachers and students—of World Literature a "metatheoretical dimension" (17).

Pizer starts with posing the question, "What is Weltliteratur and Why Teach It in a World Literature in English Translation Course" (introduction), ending with the comment on "A Metatheoretical Approach to Teaching World Literature" (afterword). A total of seven chapters examine Weltliteratur/World Literature not only as a concept and practice, but also as a discursive paradigm, a disciplinary category, and a mode of comparative examination of literatures. The introduction underlines the significance of this line of inquiry by locating World Literature in contemporary discussions of migration and economic globalization, raising thereby the pertinent threat of cultural homogenization of literary works through consumption, in English-language translations, in a university classroom. Following this, Pizer spotlights moments of German literary and cultural history in the 19th century through Goethe, Heine, and Marx (chapters 2 and 3), unfolding multiple layers of conception, reception, and circulation of the term within literary debates in the German-speaking world, all against the backdrop of political developments marked by 1848 and 1871. Reevaluations of these debates as they continue into the 20th century are performed through discussions of works by Fritz Strich and Erich Auerbach among others (chapter 4). In chapter 5, Pizer recounts the entry of the term in the United States through Margaret Fuller's translation of Eckermann's Gespräche mit Goethe. One of the most important aspects of the book is its discussion of curricular developments in the US in the early 20th century prompted by critics such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, pursued by scholars such as Ralph P. Rosenberg and educators such as Richard G. Moulton (University of Chicago) and Philo Buck (University of Wisconsin-Madison) with regards to the form, content, and value/purpose of courses on "Great Books" and "World Literature" alongside the growing field of comparative literature. (I state these institutional affiliations to highlight the formative sites of World Literature courses in the US.) The last section of this chapter connects the earlier debates with those around canonicity and multiculturalism in the late 20th century—an extension of which can be found in the final chapter, which includes a reading of two works by the (Syrian) German author Rafik Schami.

The range and scope...

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