"Literature: A World History is intended as a history of literature spanning the world's cultures from the beginnings of recorded history to the present day. In this introduction, we explain how the work is organized and why. We also offer the elements of an understanding of what we mean by literature and its history. What works from these many centuries and cultures should come under the rubric of "literature"? How can we best understand their life in their place and time and their ongoing life thereafter? What kind of history does literature have, and with what relation to broader social history? How should these literary histories be mapped across the world, with its hundreds of past and present polities and its thousands of languages? Literature: A World History proceeds in chronological fashion from antiquity onward, but it is written in awareness that in a very real sense literary history begins in the present - the present of those who deem certain facts to be literary and historical. In this sense, literary history is as revealing of the present as of the past"-- Provided by publisher.