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11 Comparative Literature

From the book Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures

  • Jan Steyn

Abstract

Comparative Literature can be instructive to Anglophone World Literatures as it emerges as a field of study. The relationship between Comparative Literature and the new world literature studies has been complex, with Comparative Literature on the one hand hosting and instigating the burgeoning inquiry into the circulation and ontopoetic worldliness of literary works and, on the other hand, providing a check against the world literature industry that often relies on Anglophone hegemony by asserting the need for expert linguistic and cultural knowledge and the irreducibility and singular local-ness of certain works and concepts. Anglophone World Literatures could learn from this caution against the dominance of English, could benefit from Comparative Literature’s experience as a discipline in perpetual existential crisis, and could be inspired by the comparative method to expand what scholars do with Anglophone texts.

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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