Description
Book SynopsisA cumulative study of the concept and evolving practices of "world literature."
Trade Review"... provocative and useful... Virtually all of the essayists remind the reader in different ways of the socio-political factors that influence what we teach and how we teach it; each author seems to be in full command of the material that he or she presents or interprets, and the essays are for the most part persuasive and clearly presented." Nancy A. Walker, professor of English, Vanderbilt University
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Reading World Literature (Sarah Lawall)
- Part 1. Initial Perspectives: Teaching the Unfamiliar; Locating Canonical Values
- Introduction (Sarah Lawall)
- 1. Misunderstanding Poetry: Teaching outside the Western Canon (Thomas M. Greene)
- 2. Classical Criticism and the Canon, or, Why Read the Ancient Critics? (Charles Segal)
- Part 2. Canonical Variations: Working with Texts and Their Countertexts
- Introduction (Sarah Lawall)
- 3. Men Working: Community under Construction(Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz)
- 4. Playing Caliban: Césaire’s Tempest(joan Dayan)
- 5. Celtic Literature and the European Canon (Maria Tymoczko)
- 6. Love and Country: Allegorical Romance in Latin America (Doris Sommer)
- 7. Reading Genres across Cultures: The Example of Autobiography (Janet A. Walker)
- Part 3. Languages of Community: Reading the Language(s) of the Text)
- Introduction (Sarah Lawall)
- 8. The Many “Worlds” in World Literature: Pound and Waley as Translators of Chinese (Eugene Chen Eoyang)
- 9. Under the Palimpsest and Beyond: The World, the Reader, and the Text in the Nigerian Novel in English (Chantal Zabus)
- Part 4. Literacies: Patterns of Understanding
- Introduction (Sarah Lawall)
- 10. The Phonograph behind the Door: Some Thoughts on Musical Literacy (Peter J. Rabinowitz and jay Reise)
- 11. Informing Adult Readers: Symbolic Experience in Children’s Literature (William Moebius)
- 12. In the Canon’s Mouth: Being Lucid about the Local (Margaret Spencer)
- Contributors
- Index
