Comparative Literature

BY BOUNDARY2 on FEBRUARY 19, 2015 an abstract by Lawrence Venuti Despite the increased attention that translation has received in conjunction with the newly revived topic of “world literature,” translation research and practice remain marginal in Comparative Literature as the field has developed in the United States. The evidence takes various forms, institutional and intellectual, including reports on the state of the field, the curricula of departments and programs, anthologies adopted as textbooks, and recent research that promulgates a discourse of “untranslatability.

Lucas Klein LUCAS KLEIN Comparative Literature is defined in part by anxiety about its institutionality. Approaching translations as works of literary scholarship equivalent to our articles and monographs can address this anxiety and also work against the Herderian assumptions of national literatures. Ultimately, the comparison of comparative literature is a metaphorical process, putting it in the same process of negotiated familiarity and strangeness as translation. In this way, institutionalizing translation might help us de-institutionalize our other institutions.