Europe between the nation and the globe

Abstract

In the post-Cold War era and amid the accelerating processes of globalization, Europe's literary cultures are becoming at once more integrated regionally and more dispersed globally. How should we understand the idea of "European literature" today? This essay argues that the nation remains the fundamental base of literary culture, but it must be understood in terms of a national market rather than a national language. A nation's literature consists of whatever works circulate within the nation, either in the original language or in translation. Examples as varied as Bartolomé de Las Casas, P. G. Wodehouse, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Eugene Ionesco can suggest something of the international variety that is regularly to be found within a national literary culture. What such cases show is that the national and the global are by no means opposed spheres. Instead, national literatures take on their full meaning when they are seen to be shot through with the international. "European literature" is best understood as the product of a dynamic interplay of the international within the national, and the national within the regional.