In contrast to most books on world literature, this one offers several “firsts.” It is one of the few studies of the intellectual milieu in which Goethe's concept of world literature originated—thus, the book's first major part, entitled “‘Eine allgemeine Weltliteratur’: Die Entstehung eines Begriffsfeldes.” Goethe's concept, according to Goßens, was formulated in reaction to the ease and growth of modern “transnational communication,” which was producing a “sich verändernde Weltwahrnehmung” (16), at least among people like Goethe. Shaping Goethe's ideas were earlier transnational projects, including such eighteenth-century compendia of universal knowledge as the Historia literaria (1718–63) of Christoff August Heumann. By the early nineteenth century such projects floundered because of the growth of knowledge and, although not discussed by Goßens, by the separating out of the natural sciences, which went their own way in respect of the exchange of Wissen and publication. Since Goethe neglected this latter phenomenon, his concept of world literature remained tied to the traditional humanistic cosmopolitanism of the compendia.

By the early nineteenth century more dynamic approaches to transnational knowledge can be seen in the works of Friedrich Bouterwek and the Schlegels, in all of which a conception of “Europe” as a unity is predominant, a unity that, per Bouterwek, arose from centuries of “Miteinander” and that also indicates, in these writings, an indication of a “steigende Humanität” (47). Such writers as well as new media (Le globe, Eco), translations, and a growing book market, not to forget the influence of Herder and Lessing as mediators of a new cosmopolitanism, led to Goethe's attempt to combine the traditional notion of universal “Bildung” and its preservation of the cultural inheritance with the “alltägliche Entwicklung der Kultur” (103).

This volume also appears to be the only study to portray the unbroken process of reception immediately following Goethe's death. Despite the interest in world literature that was evident already in Goethe's lifetime, “Merkwürdigerweise sind der Begriff Weltliteratur wie auch seine Geschichte im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert weitgehend unerforscht geblieben” (124). Thus, the second major section is entitled “Die ‘Epoche der Weltliteratur’: Wandlung eines Begriffs.” Again, “Bildung” plays a major role.