Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies

Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies
Author: Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Africa
ISBN: 9789382993667

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek proposes a theoretical approximation of already established and current aspects of the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies. His comparative cultural studies is conceived as an approach -- to be developed eventually to a full-fledged framework -- containing at this point three areas of theoretical content: 1) To study literature (text and/or literary system) with and in the context of culture and the discipline of cultural studies; 2) In cultural studies itself to study literature with borrowed elements (theories and methods) from comparative literature; and 3) To study culture and its composite parts and aspects in the mode of the proposed "comparative cultural studies" approach instead of the currently reigning single-language approach dealing with a topic with regard to its nature and problematics in one culture only. At the same time, comparative cultural studies would implicitly and explicitly disrupt the established hierarchy of cultural products and production similarly to the disruption cultural studies itself has performed. The suggestion is to pluralize and paralellize the study of culture without hierarchization. The book presents a framework of comparative literature based on a contextual (systemic and empirical) approach for the study of culture and literature and applied in audience studies, film and literature, women's literature, translation studies, new media and scholarship in the humanities, and in the analyses of English, French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian, and English-Canadian modern, contemporary, and ethnic minority texts.

Against World Literature

Against World Literature
Author: Emily Apter
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2014-06-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1784780022

Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability argues for a rethinking of comparative literature focusing on the problems that emerge when large-scale paradigms of literary studies ignore the politics of the “Untranslatable”—the realm of those words that are continually retranslated, mistranslated, transferred from language to language, or especially resistant to substitution. In the place of “World Literature”—a dominant paradigm in the humanities, one grounded in market-driven notions of readability and universal appeal—Apter proposes a plurality of “world literatures” oriented around philosophical concepts and geopolitical pressure points. The history and theory of the language that constructs World Literature is critically examined with a special focus on Weltliteratur, literary world systems, narrative ecosystems, language borders and checkpoints, theologies of translation, and planetary devolution in a book set to revolutionize the discipline of comparative literature.

Critical Essays on World Literature, Comparative Literature and the “Other”

Critical Essays on World Literature, Comparative Literature and the “Other”
Author: Jüri Talvet
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2019-09-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527540138

The book offers coherent theoretical treatment of the conceptions of “World Literature” and “Comparative Literature”, in parallel with their practical application to the research of different literary phenomena (Renaissance and Baroque creativity, literary canons, philosophy of translation, etc.), especially, as viewed from the point of view of the “other”—“peripheral” (minor, minority) national(-linguistic) cultures. Envisaging womankind’s historical liberation and a budding “comparative world sensibility” has been seen as one of the greatest merits of European “creative humanists”. To explain the deep sources of creativity and image authenticity, the notions of the (aesthetic) “infra-other” and (philosophical) “transgeniality” have been introduced. The proposed aim would be to transcend monologues of ideological-cultural “centres”, as well as formalistic and sociological trends in cultural and literary research and teaching. The book advocates a plurality of creative dialogues and a mutually enriching symbiotic relationship between “centres” and “peripheries”.

The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature

The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature
Author: David Damrosch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2009-08-23
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0691132852

Key essays on comparative literature from the eighteenth century to today As comparative literature reshapes itself in today's globalizing age, it is essential for students and teachers to look deeply into the discipline's history and its present possibilities. The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature is a wide-ranging anthology of classic essays and important recent statements on the mission and methods of comparative literary studies. This pioneering collection brings together thirty-two pieces, from foundational statements by Herder, Madame de Staël, and Nietzsche to work by a range of the most influential comparatists writing today, including Lawrence Venuti, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Franco Moretti. Gathered here are manifestos and counterarguments, essays in definition, and debates on method by scholars and critics from the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, giving a unique overview of comparative study in the words of some of its most important practitioners. With selections extending from the beginning of comparative study through the years of intensive theoretical inquiry and on to contemporary discussions of the world's literatures, The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature helps readers navigate a rapidly evolving discipline in a dramatically changing world.

From Comparison to World Literature

From Comparison to World Literature
Author: Longxi Zhang
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2014-11-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1438454724

The study of world literature is on the rise. Until recently, the term "world literature" was a misnomer in comparative literature scholarship, which typically focused on Western literature in European languages. In an increasingly globalized era, this is beginning to change. In this collection of essays, Zhang Longxi discusses how we can transcend Eurocentrism or any other ethnocentrism and revisit the concept of world literature from a truly global perspective. Zhang considers literary works and critical insights from Chinese and other non-Western traditions, drawing on scholarship from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, and integrating a variety of approaches and perspectives from both East and West. The rise of world literature emerges as an exciting new approach to literary studies as Zhang argues for the validity of cross-cultural understanding, particularly from the perspective of East-West comparative studies.

Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization

Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization
Author: Haun Saussy
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2006-05-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780801883804

Focuses on the influence of multiculturalism as a concept transforming literary and cultural studies. This book offers a comprehensive survey of comparative criticism in the 1990s. It demonstrates that comparative critical strategies can provide insights into the world's changing, and increasingly colliding, cultures.

What Is World Literature?

What Is World Literature?
Author: David Damrosch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691188645

World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature, What Is World Literature? probes the uses and abuses of world literature in a rapidly changing world. In case studies ranging from the Sumerians to the Aztecs and from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction, David Damrosch looks at the ways works change as they move from national to global contexts. Presenting world literature not as a canon of texts but as a mode of circulation and of reading, Damrosch argues that world literature is work that gains in translation. When it is effectively presented, a work of world literature moves into an elliptical space created between the source and receiving cultures, shaped by both but circumscribed by neither alone. Established classics and new discoveries alike participate in this mode of circulation, but they can be seriously mishandled in the process. From the rediscovered Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century to Rigoberta Menchú's writing today, foreign works have often been distorted by the immediate needs of their own editors and translators. Eloquently written, argued largely by example, and replete with insightful close readings, this book is both an essay in definition and a series of cautionary tales.

Introducing Comparative Literature

Introducing Comparative Literature
Author: César Domínguez
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780415702683

Introducing Comparative Literature is a comprehensive guide to the field offering clear, concise information alongside useful analysis and examples. It frames the introduction within recent theoretical debates and shifts in the discipline whilst also addressing the history of the field and its practical application. Looking at Comparative Literature within the context of globalization, cosmopolitanism and post or transnationalism, the book also offers engagement and comparison with other visual media such as cinema and e-literature. The first four chapters address the broad theoretical issues within the field such as 'interliterary theory', decoloniality, and world literature, while the next four are more applied, looking at themes, translation, literary history and comparison with other arts. This engaging guide also contains a glossary of terms and concepts as well as a detailed guide to further reading.

Comparing the Literatures

Comparing the Literatures
Author: David Damrosch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0691234558

Paperback reprint. Originally published: 2020.

The Cambridge History of World Literature

The Cambridge History of World Literature
Author: Debjani Ganguly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1147
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009064452

World Literature is a vital part of twentieth-first century critical and comparative literary studies. As a field that engages seriously with function of literary studies in our global era, the study of World literature requires new approaches. The Cambridge History of World Literature is founded on the assumption that World Literature is not all literatures of the world nor a canonical set of globally successful literary works. It highlights scholarship on literary works that focus on the logics of circulation drawn from multiple literary cultures and technologies of the textual. While not rejecting the nation as a site of analysis, these volumes will offer insights into new cartographies – the hemispheric, the oceanic, the transregional, the archipelagic, the multilingual local – that better reflect the multi-scalar and spatially dispersed nature of literary production. It will interrogate existing historical, methodological and cartographic boundaries, and showcase humanistic and literary endeavors in the face of world scale environmental and humanitarian catastrophes.