Comparative Literature - Tapa dura

This book examines the state of comparative literature world-wide in the 1990s. In the past twenty years a range of new developments in critical theory have changed patterns of reading and approaches to literature: gender based criticism, deconstruction and orientalism have all had a profound impact on work in comparative literature. This book introduces some of those approaches through a series of case studies, and asks questions not only about the current state of comparative literature as a discipline, but also about its future. Since its beginnings in the nineteenth century, comparative literature has been closely associated with the emergence of national cultures, and its present expansion in many parts of the world indicate that this process is again underway, after a period of narrowly Eurocentric research in the field.