Peru, Benin, Haiti – German-Language Literature and the Transatlantic World of the 18th Century

At first glance, this sequence is puzzling: Peru, Benin, and Haiti? What does German-language literature have to do with these countries? – At second and third glance, however, these geographical references prove to have a surprising presence. Looking beyond the canon, one discovers a German-language literature that knows much about the world—one that was global before it passed through the 19th-century literary-historical sorting machine programmed for the nation.