The Provincialism of Large Countries and Small Countries

Canonites may have an interest in The Curtain: An essay in seven parts, by Milan Kundera, which recently came out in English translation. Kundera discusses Goethe's concept of a World Literature, and notes the difficulties that both small and large countries have with such a project: large countries because of their sense that their own literature is sufficient, small countries because of the heightened role of their necessarily more modest literature in their own national consciousness.

One thing that strikes me in reading Kundera is how different his canon is from us English speakers - in several spots he elevates to a critical aesthetic position novelists we hardly read (Grimmelshausen, anyone?), and very much expresses his dismay at the way in which the French (France being his second home) assess their own cultural "canon".