Toward Interpretive Pluralism: Literary History and the History of Reading

Abstract

As a discipline, literary history is about four centuries old. There is not much literary history in antiquity or the Middle Ages. Literary history begins to be written seriously in the early modern period. The writing of this kind of history coincides with the appearance of national identity, that is, the sense of identity associated with the nation-state. Literary history is one form of expression of na tional identity. Efforts have been made from time to time to introduce an international perspective into literary history, but most projects in the field are still conceived within a nationalist framework.