Walter Cohen argues that the history of European literature and
each of its standard periods can be illuminated by comparative
consideration of the different literary languages within Europe and
by the ties of European literature to world literature. World
literature is marked by recurrent, systematic features, outcomes of
the way that language and literature are at once the products of
major change and its agents. Cohen tracks these features from
ancient times to the present, distinguishing five main overlapping
stages. Within that framework, he shows that European literatures
ongoing internal and external relationships are most visible at the
level of form rather than of thematic statement or mimetic
representation. European literature emerges from world literature
before the birth of Europe - during antiquity, whose Classical
languages are the heirs to the complex heritage of Afro-Eurasia.
This legacy is later transmitted by Latin to the various
vernaculars. The uniqueness of the process lies in the gradual
displacement of the learned language by the vernacular, long
dominated by Romance literatures. That development subsequently
informs the second crucial differentiating dimension of European
literature: the multicontinental expansion of its languages and
characteristic genres, especially the novel, beginning in the
Renaissance. This expansion ultimately results in the reintegration
of European literature into world literature and thus in the
creation of todays global literary system. The distinctiveness of
European literature is to be found in these interrelated
trajectories.
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