Book contents
- Five Economies of World Literature
- Cambridge Studies in World Literature
- Five Economies of World Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Content
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 World Literature as Free Trade
- Chapter 2 World Literature as a Gift Economy
- Chapter 3 World Literature as a Planned Economy
- Chapter 4 World Literature and National Protectionism
- Chapter 5 World Literature as a Common Good and the Dialectics of Property
- Coda: Toward a Global Political Economy of World Literature
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - World Literature as Free Trade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 December 2025
Book contents
- Five Economies of World Literature
- Cambridge Studies in World Literature
- Five Economies of World Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Content
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 World Literature as Free Trade
- Chapter 2 World Literature as a Gift Economy
- Chapter 3 World Literature as a Planned Economy
- Chapter 4 World Literature and National Protectionism
- Chapter 5 World Literature as a Common Good and the Dialectics of Property
- Coda: Toward a Global Political Economy of World Literature
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 1 revisits Goethe’s endorsement of a “free trade of sentiments and ideas” in the light of the free trade discourses of his age. First, I dissect these discourses’ complexity and doctrinal incoherence in eighteenth-nineteenth-century British, French, and German political economy. Then I explore the ambivalences in Goethe’s vague suggestion about a free trade world literature by addressing his peculiar attitude to commerce, his reminiscences of the administrative economics of Cameralism based on the heritage of the self-sustaining Aristotelian household, his aversions to modern finance, and his nostalgia for the medieval trade fair. Based on these decidedly antiquated considerations informing his understanding of the mediums, sites, and agents of commercial and intellectual exchange, I suggest that as opposed to Marx’s approach to world literature as an offspring of modern industrial capitalism, Goethe’s views were bound up with pre-modern merchant capitalism.
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- Five Economies of World Literature , pp. 16 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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