The Handmaiden’s Balancing Act? The (Re)Presentation of East European Literatures in Weltliteraturgeschichte and Younger ‘World Literary History’ Ghent University
In 1877 the Austro-Hungarian Hugó Meltzl warned his colleagues: “As every unbiased man of letters knows, modern literary history, as generally practiced today, is nothing but an ancilla historiae politicae [‘handmaiden of political history’]”. At the time, Europe was dominated by the five powers of the ‘Vienna System’ (after the 1815 Congress of Vienna): England, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia, whose respective ‘national’ languages, ...