Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age

Description

From a leading figure in comparative literature, a major new survey of the field that points the way forward for a discipline undergoing rapid changes Literary studies are being transformed today by the expansive and disruptive forces of globalization. More works than ever circulate worldwide in English and in translation, and even national trad

David Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University, and a past president of the American Comparative Literature Association. His many books include What Is World Literature? (Princeton), the coedited Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature, The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, and We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University.

"How does globalism affect the books we read, and the way we read them? A leading scholar investigates." * New York Times Book Review * "Few scholars active today can claim to have done as much as David Damrosch to shape the discipline of comparative literature in the United States. . . . Damrosch writes with great clarity and care, vividly bringing individual figures and their ideas to life. . . . [He] not only displays the breadth of his own personal canon, but also argues compellingly for the idea that our understanding of a given text is always enhanced by comparing it with other texts, whether or not the pairings are conventional or expected."---Alexander Beecroft, Modern Philology