Weltlitteratur

"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe introduced the concept of Weltliteratur in 1827 to describe the growing availability of texts from other nations. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels used the term in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 to describe the "cosmopolitan character" of bourgeois literary production."

"[T]oday the term "world literature" is often used to denote the supposedly very best in literature, the so-called Western canon, recent books such as David Damrosch's What Is World Literature? define world literature as a category of literary production, publication and circulation, rather than using the term evaluatively. Arguably, this is closer to the original sense of the term in Goethe and Marx."

Monomyth

A universal pattern in mythmaking was described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Campbell borrowed the term monomyth from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Campbell's insight was that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years, all share a fundamental structure. This fundamental structure contains a number of stages, which include:

1. a call to adventure, which the hero has to accept or decline
2. a road of trials, regarding which the hero succeeds or fails
3. achieving the goal or "boon," which often results in important self-knowledge
4. a return to the ordinary world, again as to which the hero can succeed or fail
5. application of the boon in which what the hero has gained can be used to improve the world.

Campbell wrote:
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.[2]”

The classic examples of the monomyth relied upon by Campbell and other scholars include the Buddha, Moses, and Christ stories, although Campbell cites many other classic myths from many cultures which rely upon this basic structure.

The Strength of the Voice

As in frame narratives, the metanarrative voice seems to speak at varying volumes at different times and in different places. In the case of the Arabian Nights, the reader is constantly aware of the narrative voice despite a complex web of narrative layers. Scheherazade's situation is one of life or death. The reader is aware that beyond the tale, there is a greater [T]ale which is more real and in a sense, more thrilling because of it's reality. And at the same time, the reader incarnates herself into the smaller frame and enjoys this aspect of the narrative also. Likewise, we may debate over the tensile strength of the Metanarrative Voice. Does the voice of, let's say, Freud ring loud enough to bring us back out of our smaller life stories again and again? Does his metanarrative effectively connect our personal narratives? What would be a fair criteria for that? I submit that his voice does penetrate and unite a wide range of stories. Will his thoughts and writing continue to hold us together through the ages? Is his metanarrative truly beyond all or is there a story which is bigger?

The Significance of the Frame Narrative

The concept of the Metanarrative [narrative beyond all other narratives], as popularized in philosophy and theology by Lyotard, has a kind of incarnation in the literary conceit of the Frame Narrative. This conceit, while never as big as our proposed metanarratives, nevertheless informs the imagination as to the epic proportions of the created world, both inside our fictive frames and outside, in the real world.

Initial Musings / Narrative Layers

The three layers to the human story are the narrative of the individual, narrative of the community, and finally an overarching metanarrative (Fee 78-93). Lyotard defined Postmodernism as an incredulousness towards all metanarratives (Lyotard xiii). This agnosticism of everything permanent has manifested in both the humanities and the sciences. The Metanarrative Voice is a forum to challenge and explore our incredulousness in order to grapple with the voice that might or might not be there.

Mimesis is the representation of reality. Whether one believes in reality or not is, perhaps, personal preference. However, many of us, for many different reasons choose daily to engage in one form of representation or another (i.e. the clothes we wear, the furniture we buy, the houses we live in, the facial expressions we make). These things are artistic choices, revealing and concealing the truth inside of us. Writers and painters get more attention for their craft. Critics like to pick apart the intentional act of mimesis. But there is also plenty of criticism for the unconscous act of representation. When dad comes down the stairs in two different socks, a plaid shirt and boxers - his dress is a fairly straight forward representation of the true nature within. When the young professional wears a permanent frown, she has dawned the war mask of the modern battlefield, and in choosing that mask she has simultaneously revealed herself. However, these acts of representation, like the ones of the professional artist, are nuanced with different layers of intentionality and truth. The truth that dad is feeling lazy is a very simple facet of the much larger story. The woman in the mask has revealed her need for emotional defense, but there is much more to her story as well. Any work of fiction, movie or work of visual art is inevitably an autobiography of the artist (Wilde 9). These intentional acts of representation are, in a sense, on a sliding scale of effectiveness. For whether we believe in truth or not, whether we believe in reality or not, we nonetheless try to communicate on a regular basis for some reason. Communication is human. The effectiveness of our communication may be linked to the power of our objective correlatives. While the universality of some expression may increase the likelihood of being understood, the ability to be truly and deeply known is aided by a more skilled, artistic intentionality in communication.

Introduction

This blog is a virtual exploration, discussion, education and critique into and on the Metanarratives underlying the artforms of humanity. While my personal focus is in Comparative Literature and specifically literature of the Middle East, I do hope that there will be interaction on myriad topics and levels. Check back and interact! There is much more to come.