More than ever, comparative literature sees as its task the international study of literatures, which means that the entire spectrum of world literature is potentially its field of exploration. Today this means much more than studying relations between national literatures neatly contained within the borders of national states; transnationality is everywhere: in a multiplicity of diasporas, exiles, and multinational linguistic communities spanning the world; but also within multicultural countries and megacities. It means that in the global village the possibility exists and must exist not only to study the literatures closest to one¿s own, but those of the Other, in complete reciprocity; and not only from the vantage-point of one¿s own culture but with a mind open to patterns, methods, visions very distant from one¿s own. In ¿Dialogues of Cultures¿ twenty-two authors have come to grips with this necessity, studying self-critically, with open minds and a variety of comparative methods, first, aspects of ¿East-West relations¿ (but ¿East¿ and ¿West¿ must be understood in the broadest and most symbolical sense); and secondly aspects of intra-European relations.

Contents: Eva Kushner/Haga Toru: Introduction - Mona Abousenna: Cultures in conflict or in dialogue? - Thomas Bleicher: Ein Modell der «Interkulturalität»: das Paradigma euro-arabischer Literaturbeziehungen - Bernard Hue: Le dialogue Orient-Occident entre les deux guerres - A. B. Kudelin: La poésie andalouse et les rapports réciproques des cultures arabo-musulmane et européenne au Moyen Age - Jale Parla: Translating senses into ideas: Shakespeare translations during ottoman westernization - Gloria Flaherty: Archaic forms of ecstasy and 18th-century aesthetics - Janet A. Walker: Rousseau's confessions and the modern Japanese subjective novel - S. Ade Ojo: The African novel and the traditional European characterization techniques: imitation, innovation or continuity - Debaprasad Bhattacharyya: Conceptual convergence of Indian and western traditions - Hiam Aboul Hussein: Les trois manières de Tewfik El-Halim - Holger Klein: Autumn poems: reflections on the theme as tertium comparationis - Joseph V. Ricapito: Cervantes and the Italian novellistica - Maria-Alzira Seixo: Penser la fiction baroque autour de Sorel et de Cyrano - Liljana Pavlovic-Samurovic: Opposition au genre littéraire dominant: la présence du Don Quichotte de Cervantès dans la prose serbe de la fin du XVIIIe et du début du XIXe siècle - Frank Wilhelm: Victor Hugo touriste et réfugié politique au Grand-Duché de Luxembourg - Liliana Zancu: The influence of Baudelaire on the poems of Stuart Merrill and Tudor Arghezi - Ana Maria Delgado: La mise à mort d'Aragon et la réception de motifs du romantisme allemand - Elisabeth Tsirimokou: Chemins de signes: l'écho kafkaien dans La caisse itinérante d'Aris Alexandrou - Robert Rehder: Wallace Stevens: «French and English Constitute a Single Language» - Dragan Nedeljkovic: «Guerre et paix» de Léon Tolstoï et «la chronique de Travnik» d'Ivo Andri face au drame des civilisations - Jörg Thunecke: Faction versus fiction Jacob the liar, Schindler's ark and the holocaust - John Boening: Introductions and explanations: the naturalization of Rilke in America.