Results of a Comparison of Different Peoples’ Poetry in Ancient and Modern Times (1797)

Abstract

The German philosopher, poet, and literary critic Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was a key figure in the articulation of the idea of national language and culture, without which the study of national litera-tures and therefore of comparative literature would be inconceivable. Born in a poor household in eastern Prussia, Herder educated himself largely from his father's Bible and songbook. He managed to get a college education, studying philosophy while preparing for the ministry, before embarking on a career as a teacher and wide-ranging thinker; his later years were spent in Weimar, where his friend Goethe had secured him a government post. Deeply concerned with the philosophy of language and of history, Herder positioned himself in his literary work against the cultural predominance of models from classical antiquity on the one hand and the influence of French letters on the other. He argued for an organic connection between a people and a language and exhorted the Germans to return to the spontaneous utterance of the folk. Living in a Germany still divided into small principalities, Herder elaborated an idea of the nation founded not on the state but on the organic unity of a people, a unity expressed in a Volksgeist, or national spirit. Literature holds a privileged place in his thought as the most direct reflection and cultivation of national character. In Herder's view, the greatness of any given literary expression is not to be judged according to a single universal standard; rather, each