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TranslationbyMaryClaypoolWhat canw el earnf rom ah istorical semantics, a Begriffsgeschichte of "world literature?" First, that it is necessary to return to thet exts in whichG oethee voked Weltliteratur-but also that it is necessary to take intoa ccount the wayi nw hich these textsh aveb eeni nterpreteda nd translated sinceG oethe.T he period thats eparates us fromG oethe'sW eimarh as indeeds eent he notion of "world literature" take on innumerable meanings thati th ardlyh ad at thee nd of the 1820s:s ocial,i deological, or intellectualm eanings that haveb eena dded to it duet oi ts subsequenti nscription in revolutionary,s cholarly or university contexts unknowna tt he timeo fi ts first formulation. 1 Historicalsemantics cannot be reduced to an exegesis of textsGoethe lefton thequestion. 2 Historical semantics then contributet os ituating the contemporary debates in the longuedurée of critical thought, of citizen education, of aesthetic reflections.They thus bringtolight thediverse ramifications of the notion of "world literature," andtheir particular temporalities. This reminds us that there is notalinear, cumulativeh istoryo f what one calls "world literature"s ince Goethe-nod efinitive Great Narrativet oh ope for-, but ratherc ompetingg enealogies whose patient examination reveals persisting anachronies or heterochronies.These historical semantics reveal, at leastaccording to me,four different genealogies of then otiono f" world literature."Ip roposet of irst sketch thed evelopment of each genealogy up to the 1990s. Then Iw illt urnt ot he contemporary controversies in order to study,this time,not what remains of each of thesegenealogies in the recent works on "world literature,"but how various combinations of thesefour genealogies in some way draw them osts trikingt heoretical proposals of the past ten to fifteen years in different