Five Economies of Weltliteratur

Abstract

The paper looks at a range of economic ideas that various early 19th century conceptualizations of world literature have drawn on or interacted with. What I attempt to demonstrate is that contrary to the tendency in recent debates to identify world literature as the cultural manifestation of modern capitalism per se, the multifariousness of the concept has corresponded to the heterogeneity of economic thought right from the beginning. I explore models of 1) free trade, 2) gifting, 3) economic planning, 4) national protectionism and 5) common/shared possessions in the writings of Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, Fichte, the Young Germany movement, and Karl Marx.