In our globalizing, post-colonial world, Comparative Literature is on the rise; but it is not new.
The chequered history of its acceptance in the British Isles throws a fascinating light on the last two centuries, amid many intellectual cross-currents: the British politics of the \'Four Nations\', Imperial ethnography, and the complex relationship between literary critics and the unive.
It emerged in the nineteenth century as a countermovement to methodological nationalism in the philologies.
In our globalizing, post-colonial world, Comparative Literature is on the rise; but it is not new