The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and World Literature

Reflecting on how key concepts in Romantic writing – periodicity, revolution, empire, modernity, abolition, and language – inspire World Literature's conception of its own methodologies and texts, this collection showcases how Romanticism and World Literature interact in ways that create new horizons for the study of planetary culture.

The archive of Romantic studies is every day expanding far beyond its Anglo-European confines, incorporating an ever-volatile constellation of works that, like World Literature, understands itself not in any monolithically Western sense but instead as a rhizomatic, polycentric expansion of temporalities, histories, and cultures. Here, a diverse cast of expert scholars reflect on how key concepts in Romantic literary and philosophical writings – periodicity, revolution, empire and settler culture, modernity, abolition, and the problem of language – inspire World Literature's conception of its own methodologies and texts. Covering writers ranging from Lord Byron, Immanuel Kant, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Clare to Simon Bolivar, Hérard Dumesle, Hafez, Rabindranath Tagore, and Ocean Vuong, this collection showcases how the fields of Romanticism and World Literature interact in ways that create new horizons for the study of planetary culture.