| What Is World Literature? World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature, What Is World Literature? probes the uses and abuses of world literature in a rapidly changing world. David Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor and Chair of Comparative Literature and director of the Institute for World Literature at Harvard University, and a past president of the American Comparative Literature Association. |