Comparative Literature, World Literature, and Asia

Karen Thornber

For most of its history the field of comparative literature as practiced in much of the world has focused largely on certain privileged European literatures. In recent years, there has been a blossoming of interest in Western-language writings not only from previously marginalized European literatures but also from former European colonies in Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, Oceania, and South and Southeast Asia. Yet even today, scholars working on non-Western-language literatures – the creative texts of billions of people with thousands of years of literary heritage – remain a disproportionate minority in most comparative literature departments.