The Living Prism: Itineraries in Comparative Literature

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish Studies at Laurentian
University.

Eva Kushner, an internationally recognized scholar of comparative
literature, has selected 27 of her essays, all but one previously either
published or given as papers or lectures, for this collection on
comparative literature, whose purpose she describes as involving “the
persistence of its questionings” rather than any answers it may
purport to bring. The diversity of the essays offers a broad critical
perspective, representative of Kushner’s intercultural and pluralistic
approach to literature, and reflects the constancy of her attempts to
redefine the nature of comparative literature in a postmodern era. The
essays are grouped in five sections, and organized by “a kind of
internal logic” that Kushner promptly invites the reader to see as
pieces of a puzzle that may be combined differently.

Part 1, “Legacies and Renewals,” reviews the growth of comparative
literature studies and the field’s response to changes in theoretical
discourse, and it emphasizes Kushner’s affirmation of a new role for
comparative literature, one that places it squarely “in the middle of
the global village” and at the service of human expression. Part 2,
“Changing Perspectives in Literary History,” explores the
development of a new literary historiography that takes an active part
in contemporary discourse. Part 3, “History and Early Modern
Subjectivity,” offers a multifaceted group of essays in which Kushner
considers the challenges posed by (rethinking and rewriting) the
Renaissance or, as she prefers, the “early modern” period. Part 4,
“In Memory of Northrop Frye,” comprises three essays that clearly
reveal Frye’s influence on Kushner’s thought. In the final section,
“Comparative Imaginings,” Kushner examines the force and role of
imagination in literature in topics as diverse as children’s
literature, Greek myths, and the poetry of Victor Segalen.

The Living Prism is a testament to Kushner’s richly comprehensive
knowledge of many different literatures and an invitation to reflect on
a multiplicity of elements—critical, historic, artistic, and
philosophic, among others—that affect not only comparative literature
studies but the human community whence they spring and to which they
belong.