ABSTRACT
Goethe famously declared in the early nineteenth century that an epoch of Weltliteratur, or world literature, was at hand – a development he thought could supplant, and eventually supersede, national traditions. In an 1827 interview the ur-dramaturg urged everyone in the sphere of letters to imagine this new era: “I therefore like to look about me in foreign nations, and advise everyone to do the same. National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.” 1 In the theatre, Goethe’s anticipation of a dramaturgy embodying a worldly spirit led him to advocate for, among other things, the integration of Shakespearean dramatic structures into German-language plays. That extra-national innovation alone altered the DNA of German tragedy, which had acquired fixed traits over years of mutation within a monolinguistic tradition; eventually it opened the way for epic forms as radical as Brecht’s.
