The Compass of Dignity

This volume assembles Jeremy Adler's trailblazing essays in comparative studies, exploring links between literature and the human sciences, notably politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and international law. It pivots on major ideas and historical turning-points, above all the Shoah and the exile of German Jewry as well as the Velvet Revolution and Brexit. To understand historical change, he adapts the findings of cultural analysts to literary studies. Key essays examine the genealogy of ideas, like those of persecution and human dignity, and the emergence of comparative literature. A special place is given to the memory of his late father, H. G. Adler, a founding figure in Holocaust Studies. Together with From the Renaissance to Modernism: Goethe and German Poetry, also available in this series, the volume collects the major essays of Jeremy Adler.