Suchergebnisse

Anushiravani's essay is a historical and critical survey of comparative literature in Iran that discusses its present challenges and potentialities for development in the context of new directions in the field. It is divided into three parts; the first examines the origins of comparative literature in Iran. The second deals with the present state of comparative literature programs and journals at Iranian universities and academic centers. This section investigates the main challenges facing this discipline in Iran. The last part speculates on the future trends and directions of comparative literature in Iran in the light of younger scholars' and graduate students' interest in interdisciplinary studies, translation, and world literature.

Adebayo's article examines the diffcult road that African literature had to take toward becoming acceptable in its own right between the 1930s and the 1950s. In the 1960s, after political independence in most African states, African literature found a central place in world literature. In Nigeria specifically, notable writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, J. P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo, and Buchi Emecheta gave Nigerian literature worldwide acclaim. However, because the criticism of African literary criticism developed to a large extent as a reaction against negative Eurocentric appraisal of the creative works of Africans, it was not compared favorably to other foreign literatures. There was acute protectionism of African literature from perceived foreign incursion and supplanting, which led to a call for an Afrocentric criticism. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a surge of universalism in creation and criticism. It saw the rise of well-known professors of comparative literature who encouraged opening up African literature to other literature and also founded the first Nigerian journal of comparative literature. However, it was not until the beginning of the twenty-first century that comparative literature reappeared as a serious area of discourse in Nigerian universities. The discipline has entered a new era of fertile international academic exchange.

Between 1969 and 1979, Edward Said redefined American comparative literature, coining phrases, supplying a new critical pantheon (Vico, Schwab), and, above all, devising a method. Falling between generations and facing two different kinds of continental èèmigrèè——one philological, the other textualist——Said outmaneuvered the latter by reinterpreting the former. In a two-pronged move, he unleashed an arsenal of arguments against both new critical formalism and its latter-day avatars in ""theory."" With these arguments, his authority was penetrating and atmospherically felt as he chipped away at the edifice of traditional comparative literature by emphasizing the situatedness of form and the transitive intelligence of humanist intellectuals.

Comparative Literature as Practiced in Iran The origin of comparative literature in Iranian academia goes back to Fatimah Sayyah (1902-1947), whose early death at the age of forty-five brought an end to an era. The seeds of the discipline remained dormant until the beginning of the new millennium, when a narrow nationalistic idea of comparative literature supported Iranian policy makers' hope that the discipline would justify the cultural superiority of their home country over the world, especially the West. In the new period one witnesses a rapid growth of comparative literature studies in Iran. In recent years Iranian comparatists, especially the younger scholars, have found new definitions of the discipline. A origem da Literatura Comparada na universeidade iraniana remonta a Fatimah Sayyah (1902-1947), cuja morte prematura, aos 45 anos, foi o fim de uma era. As sementes da disciplina permaneceram adormecidas até o começo do novo milênio, quando uma ideia nacionalista estreita de Literatura Comparada fundamentou as esperanças dos agentes politicos iranianos de que a disciplina justificaria a superioridade cultural de seu país natal sobre o resto do mundo, especialmente o Ocidente. No novo período. Pode-se testemunhar um rápido crescimento de estudos de Literatura Comparada no Irã. Em anos recentes, comparatistas iranianos, especialmente os mais jovens, encontraram novas definições da disciplina.

The first book to assess the impact of feminist criticism on comparative literature, Borderwork recharts the intellectual and institutional boundaries on that discipline. The seventeen essays collected here, most published for the first time, together call for the contextualization of the study of comparative literature within the areas of discourse, culture, ideology, race, and gender. Contributors: Bella Brodzki, VèVè A. Clark, Chris Cullens, Greta Gaard, Sabine Gölz, Sarah Webster Goodwin, Margaret R. Higonnet, Marianne Hirsch, Susan Sniader Lanser, Françoise Lionnet, Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Lore Metzger, Nancy K. Miller, Obioma Nnaemakea, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Anca Vlasopolos.