Sign in

Comparative Literature (Journal)

@complit.bsky.social
40 followers 13 following 32 posts

Comparative Literature explores issues in literary history and theory. Since its inception in 1949, the journal remains a source for cutting-edge research in the humanities. www.dukeupress.edu/comparative-lite…

PostsRepliesMedia
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Salīm Barakāt’s Weird Ecology url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Salīm Barakāt’s Weird Ecology
Abstract. This article suggests a marked ecological consciousness within the Arabic novel and its experimental poetics, reading the Kurdish-Syrian author Salīm Barakāt’s debut novel Fuqahāʾ al-ẓalām (...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Hope for a New Order: Postwar PEN and the Reconstruction of the Global Republic of Letters url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Hope for a New Order: Postwar PEN and the Reconstruction of the Global Republic of Letters
Abstract. This article examines a series of annual PEN conferences from 1946 to 1950 to chart the changing landscape of the global literary space in the immediate postwar period. Founded in 1921, PEN ...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Suspicious Gifts and Speculative Translations: Colonial and Semicolonial Encounters between English and Persian url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Suspicious Gifts and Speculative Translations: Colonial and Semicolonial Encounters between English and Persian
Abstract. This essay studies an emerging discourse on forms of exchange in mid- to late nineteenth-century Iran, both in national economic practices and international concessions. As the system of eco...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Mourning in Translation: An Elegy’s Six-Hundred-Year Journey Across Languages url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Mourning in Translation: An Elegy’s Six-Hundred-Year Journey Across Languages
Abstract. Translation has often been compared to love, negotiation, and friendship, but a less frequent association with another affective process deserves further exploration. Both Jacques Derrida an...
120
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Translating Line Breaks: A View from Persian Poetics url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Translating Line Breaks: A View from Persian Poetics
Abstract. Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry trans...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Subterranean Asias: Cold War Extraction in Indian and Russian Science Fiction url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Subterranean Asias: Cold War Extraction in Indian and Russian Science Fiction
Abstract. As the Global North burns through our planet’s nonrenewable natural reserves, we find ourselves amid a crisis of resources. The legacy of Cold War consumption necessitated the extraction of ...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
The Architectonics of Hope: Fragments of Life and Text in Walter Benjamin and Hart Crane url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
The Architectonics of Hope: Fragments of Life and Text in Walter Benjamin and Hart Crane
Abstract. This essay develops a comparative account of Walter Benjamin’s and Hart Crane’s architectonic metaphors for text, culture, and history. I argue that theorist and poet alike employ parallel c...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Retroactive Continuity: How (Not) to View a Scroll Painting in the Twenty-First Century url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Retroactive Continuity: How (Not) to View a Scroll Painting in the Twenty-First Century
Abstract. Huang Gongwang’s scroll painting Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains was burned, torn apart, stolen, and resold many times before the two extant pieces of it settled across the Taiwan Strait fr...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
The Spatiality of Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
The Spatiality of Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism
Abstract. Early twentieth-century Chinese realist depictions of indoor space, such as the crowded tenement house and the penniless writer’s abode, enabled the portrayal of the physical and psychologic...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Cannibalizing Language, Translation, and Opacity in Writings by Rosario Ferré: The Multilingual Author and English url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Cannibalizing Language, Translation, and Opacity in Writings by Rosario Ferré: The Multilingual Author and English
Abstract. This essay contextualizes Rosario Ferré’s literature within a Latin American history of cannibalistic writing, explores the three major elements of her translation philosophy, and examines p...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze
Abstract. In the 1983 article “My Chances/Mes chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean Stereophonies,” Jacques Derrida gives philological questions massive philosophical significance by reading the l...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
To Face Language; or, Reading Multilingualism and the Infrastructures of Loss url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
To Face Language; or, Reading Multilingualism and the Infrastructures of Loss
Abstract. What does it mean to face language? In a 2020 essay, Michael Allan urges scholars of comparative literature to rethink linguistic diversity, not just as multiple languages, but also as multi...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Matthew Beeber's fascinating reading of Negro alongside Los poetas - “Nancy Cunard and the 1930s Coalitional Anthology.” doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Nancy Cunard and the 1930s Coalitional Anthology
Abstract. This essay addresses Pablo Neruda and Nancy Cunard’s Spanish Civil War poetry anthology Los poetas del mundo defienden al pueblo espanol alongside Cunard’s earlier anthology, her massive and...
001
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Birger Vanwesenbeeck's "Paul de Man’s Flemish" offers a brilliant comparison of de Man and Derrida regarding their theory of language-as-other. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Paul de Man’s Flemish | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Tyler Grand Pre's perceptive reading of the shifts in address in Césaire's poem - "Inflecting the French: The Poetics of Intersubjectivity in Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal." doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Inflecting the French: The Poetics of Intersubjectivity in Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal
Abstract. Aimé Césaire’s long poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal is the most expressive example of his ambitious effort “infléchir le français” (“to inflect the French”), as he famously put it in a...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Jane O. Newman and Ron Sadan's "The World’s Literatures: Erich Auerbach’s Early Essays on Giambattista Vico" rethinks the significance of Auerbach in today's comparative literary studies. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
The World’s Literatures: Erich Auerbach’s Early Essays on Giambattista Vico
Abstract. Erich Auerbach (1892–1957), best known as the author of Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur (1946; Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literatur...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Mads Larsen's "Historicist Cosmopolitanism from Scandinavia’s First Novel" analyzes Holberg's anticipation of today's cultural despondency. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Historicist Cosmopolitanism from Scandinavia’s First Novel
Abstract. Today’s political despondency is informed by how Western populations no longer believe in the cosmopolitan stories that underpinned the modern world. Before Kantian universalism became hegem...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Byungsam Jung, "Lolita in Humbert Humbert’s Camera Obscura and Lolita in Vladimir Nabokov’s Camera Lucida." - A fascinating take on the artistic object versus reality in Nabokov's literary view. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Lolita in Humbert Humbert’s Camera Obscura and Lolita in Vladimir Nabokov’s Camera Lucida
Abstract. This article analyzes two types of visual perception in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955): camera obscura and camera lucida, terms that are taken from photography and painting, respectively. ...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Ellen Howley's article "The Mythic Sea in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Poetry" investigates a transformative engagement with the myths of oceanic spaces. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
The Mythic Sea in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Poetry
Abstract. Myths of the sea are some of the most enduring cultural associations with oceanic spaces. In particular, literature written from islands and coastal locations often shares an interest in the...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
R. A. Judy's insightful take on poetic socialities in "The Poetics of Protest, from Africa to Minneapolis." doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
The Poetics of Protest, from Africa to Minneapolis
Abstract. Offering an itinerary of the thinking that led to Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiēsis in Black, R. A. Judy explains the concept of “poetic socialities” mentioned in it. This explan...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Aruni Kashyap's "Northeast Indian or Assamese: Beyond the Confines of the Indian English Literary Conventions" explores the limitations and possibilities of Indian English writing. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Northeast Indian or Assamese: Beyond the Confines of the Indian English Literary Conventions
Abstract. What does it mean to be a writer from Northeast India? What does it mean to write from the margins of India? What are the limitations of Indian English writing when it comes to depicting mar...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
In "Knowing and Not Knowing: Gossip, News, and Rumors in Two Novels about Assam," Sangeeta Ray articulates the relationship of agnotology and truth in Indian Anglophone novels. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Knowing and Not Knowing: Gossip, News, and Rumors in Two Novels about Assam
Abstract. This article articulates how an epistemology of ignorance structures the postcolonial metropolitan critic’s knowledge about a particular fraught state in India, Assam. Using the term agnotol...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 05/07/2025
From the archive: Firat Oruc’s “Thalassological Worldmaking and Literary Circularities in the Indian Ocean” introduces a special issue on the poetics of the Indian Ocean. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Thalassological Worldmaking and Literary Circularities in the Indian Ocean | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Check out our most recent special issue: “Sensing Migrant Romanticism” - introduction by Carlos Abreu Mendoza and Tanvi Solanki. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Sensing Migrant Romanticism: Introduction | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Alexander Lewis’s ““Can the Concept of God Exist in a Perfectly Logical Language?” Baraka, Wittgenstein, and the Hermeneutics of Counter-Enlightenment” discusses the influence of language philosophy on the Black Arts Movement. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
“Can the Concept of God Exist in a Perfectly Logical Language?” Baraka, Wittgenstein, and the Hermeneutics of Counter-Enlightenment
Abstract. This article looks at the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophy of language on the Black Arts Movement. Amiri Baraka’s essay / prose poem “Expressive Language” ends with a quot...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Explore Jerry White’s take on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s engagement with Catalonia - “Pasolini in/and Catalonia: Translation, Minority Languages, and Internationalism.” doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Pasolini in/and Catalonia: Translation, Minority Languages, and Internationalism | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Emily Wang’s groundbreaking analysis of Pushkin’s Byronic apprenticeship - “Russia’s Radical Byron: Reexamining the “Decembrist Pushkin”.” doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Russia’s Radical Byron: Reexamining the “Decembrist Pushkin”
Abstract. Lord Byron’s reputation in Russia’s literary imagination might surprise those who remember him not only as a multifaceted poet or political commentator, but also as a sexual libertine. Follo...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Sunny S. Yudkoff’s “Growing Old in Yiddish Modernism: The Case of the Young Yankev Glatshteyn” offers an exciting reflection on the cultural politics of language. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
Growing Old in Yiddish Modernism: The Case of the Young Yankev Glatshteyn
Abstract. This article examines the intersection of the Yiddish modernist Yankev Glatshteyn’s poetics of old age with the cultural politics of language. Specifically, the article draws on Robert Pogue...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Check out Sara Hakeem Grewal’s fascinating reading of the ghazals as a traveling form – “The Ghazal as “World Poetry”: Between Worlding and Vernacularization.” doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
The Ghazal as “World Poetry”: Between Worlding and Vernacularization
Abstract. While the ghazal has appeared in many linguistic traditions, its diversity is undermined by the imposition of a singular definition of this genre, which is further compounded by the overly s...
010
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Adam Spanos’s “The Rendezvous of Victory: Translations of Bandung Humanism” brilliantly traces the engagement of twentieth-century writers with Aimé Césaire’s poetic image. doi.org/10.1215/0010...
doi.org
The Rendezvous of Victory: Translations of Bandung Humanism
Abstract. This article tracks the engagement of several twentieth-century writers with a line from Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Journal of a Homecoming): “et il est place pour tous...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Interested in guest editing a special issue of CL? Proposals are reviewed once a year and must be submitted to cljournal@uoregon.edu by June 10th. The completed special issue would be due to our office in final form by June 15, 2026. read.dukeupress.edu/.../pages/Su...
000
Comparative Literature (Journal) @complit.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Check out the newest issue: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
read.dukeupress.edu
Volume 76 Issue 4 | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
010