I cannot tell that the wisest mandarin now living in China, is not indebted for part
of his energy and sagacity to the writings of Milton and Shakespeare,
even though it should happen that he never heard of their names.
—William Godwin
Abstract
The debate about world literature holds a prominent place in national and comparative literary studies today. However, despite its significance, critics have yet to reach a consensus on how to address its challenges, which include its methodology, the vast volume of texts, uneven circulation, and difficulties of translation. This essay examines the concerns of world literature through the lens of William Godwin’s philosophy on history writing. While Godwin’s historical perspective has not been widely discussed in relation to world literature, his reflections on history and history writing that resist a comparative approach to universal history engage with similar issues found in the debates on world literature. Delving into Godwin’s writings on history, which challenge distant approaches to history and stress the importance of the individual and the particular, this essay argues that Godwin’s pursuit of a purposeful and intimate relationship with the past offers important insights for addressing the issues of world literature. In particular, Godwin’s emphasis on the purpose of studying history and his affectionate approach toward the temporal “other” provide helpful directions in forming respectful relationships with the geographical and ethnic “other” and their literature. Godwin’s pursuit of deep knowledge and friendship with the inspiring past proposes a valuable alternative to seeking systematic incorporation of the other’s literature or unthinkingly expanding world literary canon.
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Notes
From its inception by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Weltliteratur has remained a complex concept, encapsulating the sentiments of international camaraderie, tolerance, world peace, and the intense commercial competition amongst national literatures. For early concerns about world literature, see Goethe’s prospect on world literature (1836/1973) and the early pages of Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848/2008).
See Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters (2004).
Godwin consistently addressed historical topics throughout his career. In addition to his “proper” historical work History of the Commonwealth of England (1824–1828) and history books for children, he wrote three biographies on William Pitt the Elder, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the two nephews of John Milton. He also wrote several historical novels and multiple essays offering his thoughts on history and history writing.
In Britain, early efforts to explore historical psychology and everyday experiences dates back to the late seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century, the tensions between modern interests—such as psychology, subjectivity, and feelings of the individual—and classical methods of history writing became apparent. For a detailed overview of British historiography in this period, see Mark Salber Phillips’s introduction to Society and Sentiment (2000) and Porscha Fermanis’s introduction to Romantic Pasts (2022).
David Damrosch argues that literary scholars “can learn from the field of World History” (2018, p. 5). Although world history and universal history are not identical, his example of Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett’s early conception of comparative literature that “employ[s] an evolutionary scheme” and presents “world-literature” as “a particular stage of social evolution” strongly corresponds to the stadial theory of history (ibid.). Apart from “universal history,” Daniel Little (2020) introduces the relatively recent interest in “global history” among historians. Resembling the rise of world literature, global history emerged to correct entrenched Eurocentrism and rectify Orientalist stereotypes harbored by early Western historians.
Moretti acknowledges that there is a “price” to pay for this methodology and admits the “poverty” of his concepts (2000, p. 58). Nevertheless, this poverty of details functions as an advantage in his mind, providing clarity to literary understanding akin to that of scientific methods.
Godwin’s efforts to understand Chaucer’s perspective are evident in the first ten chapters of his book that painstakingly detail Chaucer’s England from various sociocultural angles.
Tilottama Rajan similarly reads Mary Wollstonecraft in Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of ‘The Rights of Woman’ (1798) as a “subject-in-process.” Rajan argues that Godwin romanticizes Wollstonecraft in a manner that prompts readers to discover a “re-formative potential” in the late author (2000, pp. 511–514).
Godwin once wrote: “History is in reality a tissue of fables. There is no reason to believe that any one page in any one history extant, exhibits the unmixed truth” (1797/1993g, p. 203).
See Godwin’s preface to History of the Commonwealth of England
Emma Povall (2019) contends that Godwin, following Aristotle, believed friendship was the foundation of society, and further added that love is the foundation of friendship.
Although Godwin’s Eurocentrism requires caution, it is important to note that the travel of his inspiration is different from transplanting values and ideas in colonial fashion. He understands that when inspirations migrate, they take different forms to adapt to the new sociopolitical context. Godwin details his thoughts on the issue when he describes the dissemination of “daring truths” in Europe (1793/2013a, pp. 148–153).
Godwin personally experienced the uncontrollable effect of a text when Memoirs of the Author was published. Rather than befriending Wollstonecraft, readers responded with vicious criticism for his frank description of her extramarital relationships and suicide attempts.
Godwin believes that truth is not only communicable but ought to be communicated, and claims that “assisting the progress of truth” is a “duty” of man (1793/2013a, p. 5, p. 21).
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Shin, S. “I Demand the Friendship of Zoroaster”: William Godwin and World Literature of Friendship. Neophilologus (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-024-09804-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-024-09804-0