Introduction to Comparative Literature

Catalog description

An introduction to the discipline of Comparative Literature. Reading texts from multiple regions, traditions, genres and histories around the globe, the course provides students with a set of critical skills, concepts and approaches that will hone their comparative thinking and broaden their horizons of literary and cultural knowledge. Topics include the nature and purpose of literary comparison across linguistic and national frontiers, especially through the concepts of influence and affinity; the impact made by translation studies and postcolonialism on comparative literature, through case studies from Arabic, British and African literatures; comparison between the arts via case studies from world literature and cinema; the concept/discourse of world literature and the role of exiles, migrants and refugees in the making of global literatures in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.