Approaches to Comparative Literature

This class introduces students to key discussions in the field of comparative literature and postcolonial theory. We will first analyze examples from world cultures of concepts of the literary that preceded the age of modern national literatures and globalization. We then discuss translation as theory and practice, examine its global politics in setting up a market of world literature, and think along with Barbara Cassin and Emily Apter on the significance of the untranslatables. We will explore diverse propositions on world literature reading from Goethe and Erich Auerbach, Marx and Immanuel Wallerstein, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak, Abdelfattah Kilito and the writers of the Bandung Conference on Global South comparativism. Finally, we will adopt a hermeneutical approach focused on theories of time in discussing diverse genres of literature from across the globe.