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.

In his article "Literary Geography and Comparative Literature" César Domínguez analyzes the relevance of political and linguistic frameworks for comparative literary historiography in the context of the European Union. Domínguez's discussion is based on the notion of geoculture whose theorization from Immanuel Wallerstein's perspective presents paradigms of interest to comparative literature. The idea of literary geography is conceived as a unit for analyzing diverse stages of the interliterary process. Thus, within the framework of the current renaissance of Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur, the phenomena of the literatures of (im)migration, exile, and literary diglossia represent challenges for the contextualization and writing of literary history comparatively. ; SI

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.

PurposeInformal street vending is traditionally widespread and studied concerning developing countries. Nevertheless, recently, interest in the study of this practice has also increased regarding specific developed countries. The aim of the article is to contribute to overcoming the tendency to investigate this informal economy sector with different analytical lenses between the global South and global North and to highlight the usefulness of analyzing the phenomenon from a comparative perspective.Design/methodology/approachTherefore, the article represents a comparative review of the existing literature on informal street vending considering both the global South and global North.FindingsThe analysis revealed similarities and differences in the characteristics the phenomenon assumes in the two areas of the world while at the same time, showing how there are aspects mainly explored in the literature of southern countries and little explored in the literature of northern countries and vice-versa.Research limitations/implicationsThis analytical attempt allows us to highlight any gaps present in the literature, which may represent the basis for future comparative research on the topic. Comparative research will improve both theoretical and empirical knowledge of the phenomenon.Originality/valueOn the one hand, the article represents an innovative literature review attempt, as it explicitly compares the street vending between developing and developed countries. On the other hand, it represents the first academic contribution to review street vending in the global North.