Using Arabic, English and French from the late 18th through the early 20th centuries,Shaden M. Tageldin traces the rise of modern comparative literature to a new global regime in which a language acquired power in the world (empire) insofar as it held the power to capture the world “exactly” (empiricism). In the shadow of imperialism and empiricism, languages that once had styled themselves “incomparable”–larger than life–now were urged to simulate life: the really seen and heard.