Comparative Literary Theory in Premodern Asia: Case Studies and Key Terms

Until quite recently, the act of comparison was often imagined to be rooted in a quintessentially European form of empiricism, creating many theoretical obstacles to the integration of non-European literatures into comparative theory. However, the rise of World Literary Studies has sensitized comparatists to literary difference. Worldliness not only depends on reading works of literature that might once have been considered incommensurable with western canons, but also on attending to the theoretical postures that have historically framed the reception of those works. This workshop examines emic views of the comparative act in and across premodern Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, Japanese, Chinese, Malay and Turkic literary cultures, to open up new perspectives on what comparison is and the critical terms that we can use to conceptualize it. We hope that the resulting discussions will be of interest to historians, literary specialists and comparatists alike.