This book is intended to be a sustained exposition of the principles, practices and standards of comparative literature. After a discussion of the origins, definitions and dimensions of the discipline, three chapters address questions of establishing and maintaining a department: staffing, budgeting, selecting students, setting up a curriculum, and instituting the foreign language requirement. Chapters 6 through 10 deal with the major comparative approaches--genres and forms, periods and movements, themes and myths, interrelations of literature, and literary history and criticism--and discuss courses appropriate to each. The next two chapters discuss teaching methods, textbooks, examinations and the thesis on the doctoral, graduate and undergraduate levels. Chapter 13 treats the issue of the evaluation of comparative literature departments. The concluding chapters discuss academic diplomacy and politics and the future of the discipline. An appendix on the organizational structure of the discipline and a bibliography complete the volume. (Author/AMH)