Longman and Norton: The Anthologies of World Literature and the Effects on the Literary Landscapes

Abstract

By establishing a critical dialogue with the observations of David Damrosch in Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age concerning the challenges posed to Comparatism by the current state of the discipline, the question that we will address in the present work is, above all, a position on what it means to make a comparative study in a scenario marked by the reemergence of the phenomenon of world literature in literary studies. After directing our attention to The Longman Anthology of World Literature and The Norton Anthology of World Literature, we were able to see how both still describe an unequal system of legitimation and aesthetic configuration based on a Eurocentric division between the “inside” and the “outside.” And it is precisely in the ethical and political implications of this process of “opening” to the world that lies our proposal for approaching world literature.