How to Read World Literature addresses the unique challenges faced by a reader confronting foreign literature. Accessible and enlightening, Damrosch offers readers the tools to navigate works as varied as Homer, Sophocles, Kalidasa, Du Fu, Dante, Murasaki, Moliere, Kafka, Soyinka, and Walcott.

• Offers a unique set of "modes of entry” for readers encountering foreign literature
• Provides readers with the tools to think creatively and systematically about key issues such as reading across time and cultures, reading translated works, and emerging global perspectives
• Covers a wide variety of genres, from lyric and epic poetry to drama and prose fiction and discusses how these forms have been used in different eras and cultures

• Acknowledgments 9
• Introduction 10
• Chapter 1 What Is “Literature”? 15
• Chapter 2 Reading across Time 33
• Chapter 3 Reading across Cultures 55
• Chapter 4 Reading in Translation 74
• Chapter 5 Going Abroad 95
• Chapter 6 Going Global 114
• Epilogue: Going Farther 134
• Bibliography 139
• Index 145