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Comparative literature is interdisciplinary. It is a crossover of different disciplines making it hard to define and so you will find an variety of different sources here. When we are taking about comparative literature we are also talking about English literature, history, historical cannons and contemporary works. Here, we have put together a small guide to help you get started on where to look for some reputable sources, but you may also want to look at some other subject guides.
To begin looking in the catalogue for comparative literature you can use the following search:
("comparative literature" OR "world literature") AND (dictionaries OR encyclopedias)
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What Is World Literature? by
World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature, What Is World Literature? probes the uses and abuses of world literature in a rapidly changing world. In case studies ranging from the Sumerians to the Aztecs and from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction, David Damrosch looks at the ways works change as they move from national to global contexts. Presenting world literature not as a canon of texts but as a mode of circulation and of reading, Damrosch argues that world literature is work that gains in translation. When it is effectively presented, a work of world literature moves into an elliptical space created between the source and receiving cultures, shaped by both but circumscribed by neither alone. Established classics and new discoveries alike participate in this mode of circulation, but they can be seriously mishandled in the process. From the rediscovered Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century to Rigoberta Menchú's writing today, foreign works have often been distorted by the immediate needs of their own editors and translators. Eloquently written, argued largely by example, and replete with insightful close readings, this book is both an essay in definition and a series of cautionary tales.
Distant Reading by
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions. From the evolutionary model of "Modern European Literature," through the geo-cultural insights of "Conjectures of World Literature" and "Planet Hollywood," to the quantitative findings of "Style, inc." and the abstract patterns of "Network Theory, Plot Analysis," the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of "distant reading," that has come to define--well beyond the wildest expectations of its author--a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.
Feminist Literary Theory by 
Graphs, Maps, Trees by
In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of "distant reading" into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.
How to Interpret Literature by
Offering a refreshing combination of accessibility and intellectual rigor, How to Interpret Literature presents an up-to-date, concise, and wide-ranging historicist survey of contemporary thinking in critical theory. The only book of its kind that thoroughly merges literary studies withcultural studies, this text provides a critical look at the major movements in literary studies since the 1930s, including those often omitted from other texts. It is also the only up-to-date survey of literary theory that devotes extensive treatment to Queer Theory and Postcolonial and RaceStudies. How to Interpret Literature is ideal as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with an anthology of primary readings such as Robert Dale Parker's Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies.
The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature
A first of its kind, The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature provides an overview of Comparative North American Literature, a cutting-edge discipline. Contributors make important interventions into multiculturalism in North America and into U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border literatures.
Theory into Practice by
Beginning with more accessible critical approaches and gradually introducing more challenging critical perspectives, THEORY INTO PRACTICE provides extensive step-by-step guidance for writing literary analyses. This brief, practical introduction to literary theory explores core theories in a unique chronological format and includes an anthology of relevant fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to help bring those theories to life. Remarkably readable and engaging, the text makes even complex concepts manageable for those beginning to think about literary theory, and example analyses for each type of criticism show how real students have applied the theories to works included in the anthology. Now updated with the latest scholarship, including a full discussion of Ecocriticism and increased emphasis on American multicultural approaches, THEORY INTO PRACTICE provides an essential foundation for thoughtful and effective literary analysis.
