COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

CLS publishes scholarly articles that are comparative in nature and which deal with literature from more than one linguistic tradition. Ideally, articles should be 6,000 to 13,000 words. We ask that you submit along with your manuscript a cover letter that includes an abstract (200 words or less) of your project.

Our journal’s review process usually takes 4–6 months and we accept roughly 20% of the essays submitted. Most papers are evaluated by at least two, and sometimes three experts in the relevant field(s). CLS employs a doubly anonymous review system, meaning that the identities of the referees are not revealed to the author, and papers are forwarded to the referees without any identification of authorship.

Please submit your essay in duplicate and, if you wish to have the manuscript returned, enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. If you would like to submit a manuscript electronically, please send it as an attachment, along with your full contact information to: cl-studies@psu.edu. 

A Style Sheet for Authors

All manuscripts should follow the guidelines for scholarly writing set forth in the Chicago Manual of Style, especially chapter two, "Manuscript Preparation and Manuscript Editing," sections 2.1–2.46. In preparing notes, authors should use "endnote style"—CLS does not use the "Works Cited" style. All quotes should be in both the original language and in English translation, and for the sake of readability we request that you use a 12-point font, double-spaced. CLS does not publish discursive notes or general acknowledgment notes. For the former, authors should either place the argument in the text of the piece, or eliminate it.

 

• Titles should appear centered and in roman letters. Please do not use boldface, all capital letters, or quotation marks (unless the title itself or part of the title is a direct quotation from a work). Authors should capitalize only the first letter of each word, except articles and smaller words such as "it" or "or." The author's name should appear centered directly beneath the title in italics. Authors need not place "by" before their names. Example:

The International Maze: Rilke's "Der Turm" and 
His Relation to Aestheticism
Judith Ryan

 

• Authors should begin the first sentence of the first paragraph flush left with the left-hand margin. Thereafter, each paragraph should be indented five spaces by using the "tab" key. Please do not justify the right-hand margin. Also, all parts of a manuscript—text, quotations, and notes—should be double-spaced. Printers do not accept single-spaced copy.

• At the conclusion of the essay, the author should give his or her affiliation hard against the right-hand margin in italics. Example:

• Please begin the notes on a new page, with the word “Notes” flush against the left-hand margin, italicized.

• Quotations should be given in the original language with English translations immediately following in square brackets. When providing your own translation of a short passage (fewer than five lines), place the English in square brackets, without quotation marks, followed by a citation and a period.
  
  

Example: The grandfather's first words--"Il me semble qu'il ne fait pas très clair ici" (201) [It seems to me that it is not very light here]—signal his obsession with the signs indicating death's approach.

• If you are utilizing a published translation, follow the format below, adding quotation marks around the translation and including the page number inside the square brackets.
  
  

Example: The grandfather's first words--"Il me semble qu'il ne fait pas très clair ici" (201) ["It seems to me that it is not very light here" (85)]—signal his obsession with the signs indicating death's approach.

• When the quoted passage runs more than five lines in prose or three in verse, set the passage off from the main text, remembering to retain the double-spacing. After the quotation, the author should skip two lines and place the translation in brackets. Neither the original nor the translation need be enclosed in quotation marks. Citations should follow the original, not the translation—unless, of course, the translation is a published one. Example:

 
L'Aïeul: Personne n'est entré dans la chambre?
  Le Père: Main non, personne n'est entré.
  L'Aïeul: Et votre soeur n'est pas ici?
  L'Oncle: Notre soeur n'est pas venue. (226–29)

 [Grandfather: No one has come into the room?
  Father: Why no, no one has come in.
  Grandfather: And your sister is not here?
  Uncle: Our sister has not come.]

A Few Notes on Notes

For numbering endnotes, always use a base-aligned number followed by a period. “University Press” should be abbreviated “UP”; a cited page number should not be preceded by “p.”; and, perhaps most important, when referring to a work for the first time, please give full publication information in an accompanying note, with subsequent references to the work given parenthetically in the text as needed. Parenthetical references should include only the author’s name and the page number, unless there are several works by the author; in those cases, a shortened title may be included in the parenthetical reference as well.

CLS does NOT print discursive notes. Please incorporate all pertinent information into the body of your text rather than placing it in the notes section. Also, we do not print acknowledgments.           

Following are examples of the correct note form for various types of sources.

Book by one author:

1. Richard Wright, Native Son (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940), 100–01.

 

An anthology:

2. Sigmund Freud, Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis: Three Case Histories, trans. James Strachey, ed. Philip Rieff (New York: Collier Books, 1963), 63–66.

 

A translation:

3. Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master & Margarita, trans. Mirra Ginsburg (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967).

 

A multivolume work:

4. Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke, 6 vols. (Frankfurt: Insel, 1955).

Or, if referring to a specific volume and page number,

4. Rainer Maria Rilke, Sämtliche Werke (Frankfurt: Insel, 1955), 1:13–15.

 

An edition:

5. Georges Rodenbach, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Claude Pichois, rev. ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 1:79–80.

 

A republished book:

6. Thomas Maurice, History of Hindostan (1795; New Delhi: Navrang, 1973).

 

An article in a journal with continuous pagination:

7. Jerry Varsava, "Calvino's Combative Aesthetics: Theory and Practice," Review of Contemporary Fiction 6 (1986): 17.

 

A website:

8. Royall Tyler, “Translating The Tale of Genji,” Japan Association of Translators (2003), http://www.jat.org/jtt/tylergenji.html (accessed September 15, 2004).

 

*In addition to these style specifications, please make sure your submission conforms to the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) general guidelines.

 

 

Updated 03 April 2008 by Michelle Toumayants