anna.

“From the dramas of Antiquity to the novels of Modernity, from Eastern epics to Western classics, there is not a text in history that is truly self-sufficient. To read and to write is to work within an existing framework of characters, conventions, plots, and premises; how we understand one work of literature is contingent on how we understand another work of literature. The more we know, the more we contextualize; the more we learn, the more we compare. Knowledge itself is comparative. Beyond how we read, beyond how we write, comparison is hard-wired into the very ways that we think.”
― Ben Hutchinson, Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction