The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature: From the European Enlightenment to the Global Present

Published by Princeton University Press 2009

The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature

From the European Enlightenment to the Global Present

Edited by: David Damrosch , Natalie Melas and Mbongiseni Buthelezi

Volume 22 in the series Translation/Transnation

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400833702

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

David Damrosch is professor of comparative literature at Harvard University and a past president of the American Comparative Literature Association. His books include How to Read World Literature and What Is World Literature? (Princeton). Natalie Melas is associate professor of comparative literature at Cornell University and the author of All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison. Mbongiseni Buthelezi is a doctoral student in English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

Reviews

"Combining classic essays with little-known pieces from across the centuries and around the world whose take on comparative literary study is especially pertinent to debates today, The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature will be an indispensable resource for debates about how to conceive of literary studies today and in the future, and a salutary reminder that for comparatists the questions posed by globalization have always been on the table."—Jonathan Culler, past president of the American Comparative Literature Association

"This is an excellent anthology of the main texts that define the field of comparative literature. These pieces show how the discipline has been organized in the past and where it is going in an age of increased globalization. The excellent introductions are concise, clear, and well written. This is a book that all students of comparative literature will want to read."—Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania

"Rebuilt many times on the high seas, comparative literature is a Noah's ark of texts, methodologies, languages, communities, and aspirations. This collection captures the restless, experimental, self-critical spirit of what has never been a discipline or a field but a project, from its emergence in the breakdown of Enlightenment universalism to current debates about circulation, translation, and value."—Haun Saussy, Yale University

"No other book gathers essays forming the major lines of comparative literature study from the Enlightenment to the present. I have no doubt that it will benefit anyone who teaches introductory courses in comparative and world literature. It is easy to imagine an undergraduate or graduate course structured by this book, with several literary works read alongside each of its sections. And The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature is scrupulously well organized and edited, with concise, informative biographical introductions that reveal the kinds of negotiations of language, national identity, and struggle that are at the heart of the discipline."—Kevin McLaughlin, Brown University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
TRANSLATION/ TRANSNATION Emily Apter Publicly Available Download PDF	ii
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
INTRODUCTION Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
PART ONE ORIGINS
1 Results of a Comparison of Different Peoples’ Poetry in Ancient and Modern Times (1797) Johann Gottfried Herder Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2 Of the General Spirit of Modern Literature (1800) Germaine de Staël Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	10
3 Conversations on World Literature (1827) J. W. von Goethe and J. P. Eckermann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
4 From The Birth of Tragedy (1872) Friedrich Nietzsche Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
5 Present Tasks of Comparative Literature (1877) Hugo Meltzl Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
6 The Comparative Method and Literature (1886) Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	50
7 World Literature (1899) Georg Brandes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
8 From What Is Comparative Literature? (1903) Charles Mills Gayley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
PA R T TWO THE YEARS OF CRISIS
9 The Epic and the Novel (1916) Georg Lukács Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
10 Chaos in the Literary World (1934) Kobayashi Hideo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
11 From Epic and Novel (1941) Mikhail Bakhtin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
12 Preface to European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948) Ernst Robert Curtius Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
13 Philology and Weltliteratur (1952) Erich Auerbach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
14 From Minima Moralia (1951) Theodor Adorno Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
15 Poetry, Society, State (1956) Octavio Paz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
16 Preface to La Littérature comparée (1951) Jean-Marie Carré Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	158
17 The Crisis of Comparative Literature (1959) René Wellek Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
PART THREE THE THEORY YEARS
18 The Structuralist Activity (1963) Roland Barthes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
19 Women’s Time (1977) Julia Kristeva Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
20 Semiology and Rhetoric (1973) Paul de Man Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
21 Writing (1990) Barbara Johnson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
22 The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem (1978) Itamar Even-Zohar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	240
23 Cross-Cultural Poetics: National Literatures (1981) Édouard Glissant Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
24 The World, the Text, and the Critic (1983) Edward W. Said Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
25 The Quest for Relevance (1986) Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	284
PART FOUR CONTEMPORARY EXPLORATIONS
26 Comparative Cosmopolitanism (1992) Bruce Robbins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	309
27 Literature, Nation, and Politics (1999) Pascale Casanova Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329
28 Comparative Literature in China (2000) Zhou Xiaoyi and Q. S. Tong Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341
29 From Translation, Community, Utopia (2000) Lawrence Venuti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	358
30 Crossing Borders (2003) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	380
31 Evolution, World-Systems, Weltliteratur (2006) Franco Moretti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	399
32 A New Comparative Literature (2006) Emily Apter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	409
BIBLIOGRAPHIES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	421
CREDITS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	431
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	435