The volume serves as a brilliant introduction to a number of Danish writers and literary works also highlighting lesser known writers such as Ludvig Holberg, Steen Steensen Blicher and Johannes V. Jensen and placing them in the context of World Literature. The quality of the meticulously researched and well-written contributions is first-class and makes the volume indispensable for students and scholars alike.

Sven Hakon Rossel, Professor of Scandinavian Literature, University of Vienna, Austria

In one of his studies the famous Danish literary critic Georg Brandes talks about a peculiar optical instrument to illustrate the strategy of comparative literary studies. He compares the effects of these studies with the impacts of a telescope where one end magnifies and the other reduces. Due to Brandes the comparative approach has a similar dual nature as such a telescope: On the one hand it brings us closer to what is foreign to us, on the other it distances us from what is familiar to us. The volume <i>Danish Literature as World Literature</i> fulfills this approach in brilliant manner. Well-known experts in the field present the history of Danish Literature for foreign readers. But in relating this literary history to its global context they also deliver an unfamiliar, surprising and fresh look on <i>Hamlet</i>, Andersen, Kierkegaard, Brandes and other representatives of the Danish World Literature.

Klaus Müller-Wille, Professor of Nordic Philology, University of Zurich, Switzerland

<i>Danish Literature as World Literature </i>offers essentially the best of two worlds: the cream of the crop in Danish literary history, and a highly informed and challenging discussion – by an outstanding group of scholars – of how this literature, through the centuries, has engaged with the world at large. It is a welcome contribution to the debate on how literature in general always has negotiated between local traditions and literary cultures and their global trends and developments. This book is a wonderfully rich depository of stories – ranging from medieval times to today – about texts, ideas and authors travelling in space and time. Sometimes these narratives transmute and disseminate in completely different forms and media – like the recent wave of "nordic noir" – showing that Danish literary and cultural products have become truly global commodities that never deny their origin.

Henk A. van der Liet, Chair of Scandinavian Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

By reframing Danish literature in terms of its reciprocal movement between the local and the global, the excellent essays in this collection make a significant contribution to the field of post-national literary historiography. The fact that the authors and texts chosen as analytic test cases primarily for their interstitial, mediating qualities are in many cases also familiar canonical Danish examples simply underscores the inherent transnational flux and mobility of “national" literary activity. A striking impression of Danish literature’s mixture of local receptiveness and global impact, of significant literary activity at home and abroad, emerges collectively from these essays in all its historical variation.

Mark B. Sandberg, Professor of Film & Media and Scandinavian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA

[T]he individual chapters succeed admirably at amplifying influential, articulate Danish voices in a centuries-long global conversation about life, literature, and the pursuit of meaning.

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