Translated Literature in Literary History
Translated Literature in Literary History

Summary/Abstract: The idea of a ”world literature” is closely related to literature in translation. When Goethe suggested the term in one of his conversations with Eckermann around 1830 he had translated literature in mind. This literature was expanding in the 19th century with the great novels by for instance Balzac and Dickens as its basic commodity. It is a troubling thought that literary history was invented at more or less the same time. The thought is troubling because literary history is very much a national concern based on the literature of the mother tongue – in that sense opposed to the idea of translated literature as world literature. In the present article I will dwell on this trouble: the relation between translated literature and literary history. Or perhaps we should call it a lack of relation? Virginia Woolf once suggested that we should regard Constance Garnett – the translator of Russian novels – as one of the most important English writers of the early 20th century. Needless to say such an idea would imply a complete rewriting of literary history as we know it. The national perspective still rules, although translated literature has become increasingly important in the new readings of literary history and literary systems that have been presented in recent years by for example Franco Moretti and Pascale Casanova. Perhaps we can expect a new type of literary history as a result of the on-going “globalization”, what I would like to call the fifth phase of translated world literature.

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