Muqāranah: The Art of Comparison in Premodern Arabo-Islamic Poetics

In the current educational landscape of North American and European institutions, comparative literature is still greatly influenced by Euro-American principles and methodologies. Edward Said compellingly argues that Eurocentric epistemology has perpetuated a false hierarchy wherein the modernity of Euro-American cultures diminishes the literary theories developed by premodern non-Europeans, relegating their texts to the status of mere objects of study within Euro-American analytical frameworks. Said elucidates how this false hierarchy asserts that scholarly discourse on comparative literature, world literature, and literary theory originated primarily from the perspectives of the Euro-American realm during the twentieth century.