Synopses & Reviews
A Companion to Comparative Literature presents a collection of more than thirty original essays from established and emerging scholars, which explore the history, current state, and future ofcomparative literary studies. Chapters address such topics as the relationship between translation and transnationalism, literary theory and emerging media, the future of national literatures in an era of globalization, gender and cultural formation across time, East-West cultural encounters, postcolonial and diaspora studies, and other experimental approaches to literature and culture, combining impeccable scholarship with thought-provoking insights.
About the Author
Ali Behdad is John Charles Hillis Professor of Comparative Literature and Chair of English Department at UCLA. He is the author of
Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution (1995) and
A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States (2005).
Dominic Thomas is Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has edited several volumes on cultural and political topics and is the author of Black France: Colonialism, Immigration and Transnationalism (2007) and Africa and France: Postcolonial Cultures, Migration and Racism (2013).
Table of Contents
List of Contributors viii
Introduction 1
Ali Behdad and Dominic Thomas
Part I Roadmaps 13
1 A Discipline of Tolerance 15
Rey Chow
2 Why Compare? 28
David Ferris
3 Method and Congruity: The Odious Business of Comparative Literature 46
David Palumbo-Liu
4 Comparisons, World Literature, and the Common Denominator 60
Haun Saussy
5 Comparative Literature in America: Attempt at a Genealogy 65
Kenneth Surin
Part II Theoretical Directions 73
6 The Poiein of Secular Criticism 75
Stathis Gourgouris
7 Vanishing Horizons: Problems in the Comparison of China and the West 88
Eric Hayot
8 Art and Literature in the Liquid Modern