Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction
    Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction
    Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction
    Audiobook4 hours

    Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction

    Written by Ben Hutchinson

    Narrated by Chris MacDonnell

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From colonial empire-building in the nineteenth century to the postcolonial culture wars of the twenty-first century, attempts at "comparison" have defined the international agenda of literature. But what is comparative literature? Ambitious readers looking to stretch themselves are usually intrigued by the concept, but uncertain of its implications. And rightly so, in many ways: even the professionals cannot agree on a single term, calling it comparative in English, compared in French, and comparing in German. The very term itself, when approached comparatively, opens up a Pandora's box of cultural differences.

    Yet this, in a nutshell, is the whole point of comparative literature. To look at literature comparatively is to realize just how much can be learned by looking over the horizon of one's own culture. In an age that is paradoxically defined by migration and border crossing on the one hand, and by a retreat into monolingualism and monoculturalism on the other, the cross-cultural agenda of comparative literature has become increasingly central to the future of the Humanities. We are all, in fact, comparatists, constantly making connections across languages, cultures, and genres as we read. The question is whether we realize it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 27, 2018
    ISBN9781541446984
    Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction
    Author

    Ben Hutchinson

    Ben Hutchinson is an award-winning essayist, critic and professor of European literature. A consultant editor at the Times Literary Supplement, he is the author of seven books, including The Midlife Mind and Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction. His writing appears regularly in the national and international press.

    Related to Comparative Literature

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Criticism For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      This Labor Was Never for You: Sex and the Small Press

      Mar 20, 2019

      More often than not, when we as women express intellectual interest, this curiosity is read through the lens of physical desire. The post This Labor Was Never for You: Sex and the Small Press appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Beyond “Survival Of The Fittest”

      Oct 15, 2021

      If you learned about Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in school, most likely it was presented as a straightforward explanation for how species have evolved to become what they are today. Individuals with different traits competed, and the stronge

      4 min read

    • Article

      Kate Briggs Isn’t Trying to Be Original

      Apr 9, 2024

      "I’ve never been interested in making a claim to originality." The post Kate Briggs Isn’t Trying to Be Original appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Do Great Books Still Matter? For Roosevelt Montás, They Are Essential.

      Dec 15, 2021

      The study of the Great Books – a fluctuating list of predominantly Western texts hailed by academics – has long been criticized as elitist, sexist, and Eurocentric. But Roosevelt Montás is coming to the books’ defense. The Columbia University alumnus

      3 min read

    • Article

      On Apocalyptic Poetry

      Jun 25, 2018

      On Apocalyptic Poetry
      14 min read

    • Article

      Hearing Voices and Talking Back: On Bibliomancy

      Mar 29, 2018

      I. Bibliomancy is a form of divination in which one consults a book for answers and advice. The process is simple: Stand the book up on its spine. Ask your question. Let the book fall open to a random page. With your eyes closed, place your finger on

      7 min read

    • Article

      Hot for Epistolary Poetry

      Mar 25, 2021

      The editors of We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics on imagination, abundance, and what keep them up at night

      5 min read

    • Article

      Kanishk Tharoor on Writing Outside of Western Traditions

      Mar 16, 2017

      For years I knew Kanishk Tharoor primarily as the author of thoughtful essays about history, in the broadest sense: not just what happened in the past but also how humans have explored the past, made sense of the past, contested the past. So when I s

      6 min read

    • Article

      Kill Your Idols: On the Violence of Experimental Literature

      Oct 23, 2019

      If innovation is in itself a destructive gesture, can that generative violence be placed in service of activism and advocacy through language? The post Kill Your Idols: On the Violence of Experimental Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      An Interview With Bianca Stone

      May 1, 2023

      An Interview With Bianca Stone
      11 min read

    • Article

      On The Cult Of Craftism

      Oct 14, 2022

      If craft is a writer’s fundamental heartbeat, then craftisim is hypertension. The post On the Cult of Craftism appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Taking Poetry Personally

      Nov 1, 2021

      To consider how absorption into a poem’s world works, immerse yourself in two opening stanzas. The first comes from John Crowe Ransom’s most anthologized poem, the elegy “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” first published in 1924: There was such s

      12 min read

    • Article

      Can Literature Make Us Better People?

      Nov 7, 2017

      If we take seriously the claims of goodness that works of literature make—claims that needn’t divert from ugliness, and indeed often illuminate systems of injustice—then our time spent in fictional spaces is hardly wasted. The post Can Literature Ma

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Limits of Empathy: Criticism and Editing Across Borders

      Mar 15, 2020

      As an editor who works primarily with art critics, perhaps this comparison is simply too tempting: a piece of writing will likely never have a closer reader than its most committed editor, just like an artwork will seldom have as close a reader as it

      7 min read

    • Article

      Airea D. Matthews: Texting with Anne Sexton

      Mar 22, 2017

      For the second installment in a monthly series of interviews with contemporary poets (read part one here), Peter Mishler corresponded with poet Airea D. Matthews. Airea D. Matthews’s first collection of poems, Simulacra, received the 2016 Yale Series

      7 min read

    • Article

      David Treuer of Pantheon

      Feb 16, 2022

      David Treuer of Pantheon
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Time Is Now

      Jun 13, 2018

      Although we often associate travel writing with essays about journeys or roadtrip novels, poetry has had a long, rich history of association with travel. Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century poems explore wanderlust and faraway locales and new mode

      2 min read

    • Article

      Introduction: The Political Economy of Great Works of Literature

      Nov 1, 2020

      The Independent Review aims to be an “interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of political economy and the critical analysis of government policy,” which covers “economics, political science, law, history, philosophy, and sociology.”1 This iss

      6 min read

    • Article

      TWO REVIEWS AND A SPECTRAL INTERLUDE Heredities, Flood Song, and Incantations APR Books

      Sep 1, 2019

      Would we trust other ghosts? —Dawn Lundy Martin I was so excited to hear that J. Michael Martinez and Sherwin Bitsui had poetry collections coming out in 2018. Martinez’s Museum of the Americas was selected as a winner in the 2017 National Poetry Ser

      25 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Comparative Literature

    4/5

    16 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A great introductory text to Comparative Literature, its historical context, and contemporary trends in the field.