A new history of comparative literature by a leading scholar in the field
David Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University, and a past president of the American Comparative Literature Association. His many books include What Is World Literature? (Princeton), the coedited Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature, The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, and We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University.
"How does globalism affect the books we read, and the way we read
them? A leading scholar investigates."
*New York Times Book Review*
"Few scholars active today can claim to have done as much as David
Damrosch to shape the discipline of comparative literature in the
United States. . . . Damrosch writes with great clarity and care,
vividly bringing individual figures and their ideas to life. . . .
[He] not only displays the breadth of his own personal canon, but
also argues compellingly for the idea that our understanding of a
given text is always enhanced by comparing it with other texts,
whether or not the pairings are conventional or
expected."---Alexander Beecroft, Modern Philology
"No summary could do justice to the wealth of writers, works, and
critics discussed in this book, so my recommendation is that
readers just lose themselves in this celebration of what
comparative literature is and aspires to be."---César Domínguez,
Modern Language Quarterly
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