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Synopsis Matthew Arnold once remarked, "He does not know English literature who only English literature knows," and Max Muller arrived at the intellectual conviction that "all higher knowledge is gained by comparison and rests on comparison. Over the years comparative literature has developed into a highly disciplined critical system that cuts across all geographical and historical boundaries and places a literary work in the broadest possible perspective by considering it in terms of influence, genre, theme, treatment, technique, etc. The scholarly essays included in this volume offer a magnificent spectrum and richness of variety of comparative approaches to, and aesthetic relish of, literature. The authors discussed are as varied as they are separated by space and time: Sophocles and Saul Bellow, Hermann Hesse and Nayantara Sahgal, Appachana and Shani Mootoo, Browning and Tagore, Poe and Jibananda, for example. Both the serious scholars and the general readers will find this book extremely interesting and useful.