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This chapter discusses Goethe's “world literature” ( Weltliteratur ) paradigm in its historical origins in a period of uneasy cosmopolitanism in the wake of the Congress of Vienna. The world literature paradigm arose in this milieu, and can be seen as an attempt to transcend the budding, albeit often cultural and localized, nationalism after the Napoleonic Wars. Goethe's discomfort with any form of nationalism is evident in his play Des Epimenides Erwachen (Epimenides's awakening) though it was commissioned to celebrate the Alliance's victory over Napoleon. After an initially positive reception, Young Germany authors and their liberal allies, who advocated German unification, turned against Goethe's world literature paradigm, and the cosmopolitan aspect of the concept was rejected for the next century. Nevertheless, Goethe and his paradigm influenced the development of literary trends in his lifetime and beyond. This is certainly the case with modernism, and the chapter concludes with a focus on Goethe's impact on this movement.

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