World literature not only refers to the national literature classics of various countries that have gained world reputation, but also refers to the study of national literature from the perspective of cosmopolitanism.
Goethe first put forward the concept of "world literature", which is a literary research beyond national literature and an academic research with cosmopolitan and egalitarian perspectives. Kea regards world literature as the basis of comparative literature, which is produced because of the awakening of cosmopolitan literature, and it also has the will of historical emperors to study cosmopolitan literature.
world literature mainly includes Chinese literature, Sanskrit literature, Pali literature, Latin literature, English literature, French literature, German literature, Persian literature, Arabic literature, Russian literature and so on. According to genre, it is divided into history books, plays, essays, poems, novels, etc. China has a unique parallel prose.