ABSTRACT
It is built into the teaching of literature that when we begin reading we see each book as a monad, a universe in itself. It was an item of faith in New Criticism, which shaped my education, that each book really is a monad, and it is a compelling idea. The fundamental appeal of fiction is that it wraps around us and temporarily replaces our outside world. Criticism cannot remain in there, however, and the moment we begin to think in comparative terms criticism becomes uncomfortable. Once the walls of the fiction become transparent the rules we follow as readers become less obvious. Hearing phrases from Holinshed’s Chronicles in lines of Shakespeare, or hearing paraphrases of Virgil in the verses of The Divine Comedy never seems a cause for anxiety, since Shakespeare and Dante are perceived to occupy secure niches at the center of tradition, but there are cases where looking past the walls is a source of pain. When we hear Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the interstices of a novel by Parsipur or Poe in Hedayat we may feel that those whispers question the coherence and identity of the influenced writer.
