Comparative Literature (Journal)
@complit.bsky.social
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. https://www.dukeupress.edu/comparative-literature
Salīm Barakāt’s Weird Ecology url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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 (...
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February 26, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Salīm Barakāt’s Weird Ecology url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Hope for a New Order: Postwar PEN and the Reconstruction of the Global Republic of Letters url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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 ...
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February 24, 2026 at 5:18 PM
Hope for a New Order: Postwar PEN and the Reconstruction of the Global Republic of Letters url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Suspicious Gifts and Speculative Translations: Colonial and Semicolonial Encounters between English and Persian url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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February 20, 2026 at 3:27 AM
Suspicious Gifts and Speculative Translations: Colonial and Semicolonial Encounters between English and Persian url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Mourning in Translation: An Elegy’s Six-Hundred-Year Journey Across Languages url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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February 17, 2026 at 10:59 PM
Mourning in Translation: An Elegy’s Six-Hundred-Year Journey Across Languages url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Translating Line Breaks: A View from Persian Poetics url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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February 13, 2026 at 3:10 AM
Translating Line Breaks: A View from Persian Poetics url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Subterranean Asias: Cold War Extraction in Indian and Russian Science Fiction url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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 ...
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February 10, 2026 at 5:31 PM
Subterranean Asias: Cold War Extraction in Indian and Russian Science Fiction url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
The Architectonics of Hope: Fragments of Life and Text in Walter Benjamin and Hart Crane url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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February 5, 2026 at 6:02 PM
The Architectonics of Hope: Fragments of Life and Text in Walter Benjamin and Hart Crane url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Retroactive Continuity: How (Not) to View a Scroll Painting in the Twenty-First Century url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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February 3, 2026 at 9:02 PM
Retroactive Continuity: How (Not) to View a Scroll Painting in the Twenty-First Century url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
The Spatiality of Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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January 29, 2026 at 6:53 PM
The Spatiality of Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Cannibalizing Language, Translation, and Opacity in Writings by Rosario Ferré: The Multilingual Author and English url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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January 27, 2026 at 7:09 PM
Cannibalizing Language, Translation, and Opacity in Writings by Rosario Ferré: The Multilingual Author and English url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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January 22, 2026 at 8:06 PM
Pleasure’s Swerve: Philology among Lucretius, Derrida, and Deleuze url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
To Face Language; or, Reading Multilingualism and the Infrastructures of Loss url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
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...
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January 20, 2026 at 7:20 PM
To Face Language; or, Reading Multilingualism and the Infrastructures of Loss url: read.dukeupress.edu/comparative-...
Matthew Beeber's fascinating reading of Negro alongside Los poetas - “Nancy Cunard and the 1930s Coalitional Anthology.”
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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...
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August 6, 2025 at 2:17 AM
Matthew Beeber's fascinating reading of Negro alongside Los poetas - “Nancy Cunard and the 1930s Coalitional Anthology.”
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Birger Vanwesenbeeck's "Paul de Man’s Flemish" offers a brilliant comparison of de Man and Derrida regarding their theory of language-as-other.
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Paul de Man’s Flemish | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
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August 1, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Birger Vanwesenbeeck's "Paul de Man’s Flemish" offers a brilliant comparison of de Man and Derrida regarding their theory of language-as-other.
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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."
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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...
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July 28, 2025 at 11:23 PM
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."
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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.
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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...
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July 24, 2025 at 2:33 PM
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.
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Mads Larsen's "Historicist Cosmopolitanism from Scandinavia’s First Novel" analyzes Holberg's anticipation of today's cultural despondency.
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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...
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July 23, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Mads Larsen's "Historicist Cosmopolitanism from Scandinavia’s First Novel" analyzes Holberg's anticipation of today's cultural despondency.
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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.
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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. ...
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July 18, 2025 at 3:30 PM
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.
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Ellen Howley's article "The Mythic Sea in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Poetry" investigates a transformative engagement with the myths of oceanic spaces.
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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...
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July 16, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Ellen Howley's article "The Mythic Sea in Contemporary Irish and Caribbean Poetry" investigates a transformative engagement with the myths of oceanic spaces.
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R. A. Judy's insightful take on poetic socialities in "The Poetics of Protest, from Africa to Minneapolis."
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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...
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July 14, 2025 at 2:46 PM
R. A. Judy's insightful take on poetic socialities in "The Poetics of Protest, from Africa to Minneapolis."
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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.
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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...
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July 10, 2025 at 2:57 PM
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.
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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.
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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...
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July 8, 2025 at 2:27 PM
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.
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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.
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Thalassological Worldmaking and Literary Circularities in the Indian Ocean | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
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July 5, 2025 at 1:41 AM
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.
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Check out our most recent special issue: “Sensing Migrant Romanticism” - introduction by Carlos Abreu Mendoza and Tanvi Solanki.
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Sensing Migrant Romanticism: Introduction | Comparative Literature | Duke University Press
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July 2, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Check out our most recent special issue: “Sensing Migrant Romanticism” - introduction by Carlos Abreu Mendoza and Tanvi Solanki.
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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.
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“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...
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June 30, 2025 at 2:36 PM
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.
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