Project Details
Description
Completion of a book-length study on the Arab-European origins of modern comparative literature.As a discipline, comparative literature often ascribes its origins to Europe and the United States, overlooking other histories. Through the prism of Arab-European comparison, this project develops one possible transcontinental theory of the field. It traces the rise of modern comparative literature to a new regime of language—emerging in the shadows of empire and of modern scientific method, specifically empiricism—in which words increasingly were expected to be life-like, to visualize matter and to echo the actually spoken. Languages that once styled themselves larger than life—incomparable—came to share a new, modern sense—relativist and positivist—that language must mirror or echo life. This turn to nature, bonding word to world, redefined Arabic, European, and other literatures as comparable quantities.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 1/1/19 → 12/31/19 |
Funding
- National Endowment for the Humanities: $50,400.00
Fingerprint
Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.