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This is a Literature Review study.

October 10, 2025Open Access

How (Not) to Write a History of World Literature

Key Points

The work examines how decisions on periodization impacted the representation of world literature in the published history.
Key aspects of the project, including coordination and editing, were analyzed, revealing areas that could be improved.
Despite challenges faced during the project, the initiative succeeded in producing a pioneering work on world literature.
The study reflects on the decisions made in structuring the work, emphasizing the importance of macro-regions in literature.

Abstract

The first comprehensive history of World Literature to be published in English was Literature: A World History (4 vols, 2022). As an editor-contributor of this work, I here examine in retrospect the decisions we collectively took about basic structural issues such as periodization, division of the world into six macro-regions, their proportional representation, and the multi-tier process of writing, editing and coordination. In the process, I point out several aspects of our project that in my view did not go as well as they could have, and conclude by acclaiming nonetheless the undoubted success of our pioneering endeavour.

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