COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND WORLD LITERATURE

“Comparative Literature” and “World Literature” are concepts with origins in the same era – the early nineteenth century and the rise of nationalism in Europe. With that emergent nationalism came the intellectual study of national literatures, and thus the need for explicit disciplinary models (like Comparative Literature and World Literature) which transcended national boundaries. For nearly two centuries these concepts had quite separate lives in the English-speaking world, with Comparative Literature elevated to the status of an academic discipline, while World Literature remained something popular and non-intellectual. At the end of the twentieth century, that began to change in the US academic system. This paper examines the interconnected histories of Comparative Literature and World Literature in the US academy since 1960.