Comparative literature

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Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across
linguistic, national, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the
study of international relations, but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as to understand cultures
'from the inside'."[1] While most frequently practiced with works of different languages, comparative literature
may also be performed on works of the same language if the works originate from different nations or cultures
among which that language is spoken.
The characteristically intercultural and transnational field of comparative literature concerns itself with the relation
between literature, broadly defined, and other spheres of human activity, including history, politics, philosophy,
art, and science. Unlike other forms of literary study, comparative literature places its emphasis on the
interdisciplinary analysis of social and cultural production within the "economy, political dynamics, cultural
movements, historical shifts, religious differences, the urban environment, international relations, public policy,
and the sciences."[2]

Contents
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Overview
Early work
French School
German School
American (USA) School
Current developments
See also
References
External links

Overview
Students and instructors in the field, usually called "comparatists," have traditionally been proficient in several
languages and acquainted with the literary traditions, literary criticism, and major literary texts of those
languages. Many of the newer sub-fields, however, are more influenced by critical theory and literary theory,
stressing theoretical acumen and the ability to consider different types of art concurrently, over high linguistic
competence.
The interdisciplinary nature of the field means that comparatists typically exhibit acquaintance with sociology,
history, anthropology, translation studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and religious studies. As a result,
comparative literature programs within universities may be designed by scholars drawn from several such
departments. This eclecticism has led critics (from within and without) to charge that Comparative Literature is
insufficiently well-defined, or that comparatists too easily fall into dilettantism, because the scope of their work
is, of necessity, broad. Some question whether this breadth affects the ability of Ph.D.s to find employment in
the highly specialized environment of academia and the career market at large, although such concerns do not
seem to be borne out by placement data that shows comparative literature graduates to be hired at similar or
higher rates than their peers in English.[3]

The terms "Comparative Literature" and "World Literature" are often used to designate a similar course of study
and scholarship. Comparative Literature is the more widely used term in the United States, with many
universities having Comparative Literature departments or Comparative Literature programs.
Comparative literature is an interdisciplinary field whose practitioners study literature across national borders,
across time periods, across languages, across genres, across boundaries between literature and the other arts
(music, painting, dance, film, etc.), across disciplines (literature and psychology, philosophy, science, history,
architecture, sociology, politics, etc.). Defined most broadly, comparative literature is the study of "literature
without borders." Scholarship in Comparative Literature include, for example, studying literacy and social status
in the Americas, studying medieval epic and romance, studying the links of literature to folklore and mythology,
studying colonial and postcolonial writings in different parts of the world, asking fundamental questions about
definitions of literature itself.[4] What scholars in Comparative Literature share is a desire to study literature
beyond national boundaries and an interest in languages so that they can read foreign texts in their original form.
Many comparatists also share the desire to integrate literary experience with other cultural phenomena such as
historical change, philosophical concepts, and social movements.
The discipline of Comparative Literature has scholarly associations such as the ICLA: International Comparative
Literature Association (http://www.ailc-icla.org/site/) and comparative literature associations exists in many
countries: for a list of such see BCLA: British Comparative Literature Association (http://www.bcla.org/index.ht
m); for the US, see ACLA: American Comparative Literature Association (http://www.acla.org/). There are
many learned journals that publish scholarship in Comparative Literature: see "Selected Comparative Literature
and Comparative Humanities Journals"[5] and for a list of books in Comparative Literature see "Bibliography of
(Text)Books in Comparative Literature"[6]

Early work
Work considered foundational to the discipline of Comparative Literature include Transylvanian Hungarian
Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz's scholarship, also the founding editor of the journal Acta Comparationis Litterarum
Universarum (1877) and Irish scholar H.M. Posnett's Comparative Literature (1886). However,
antecedents can be found in the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his vision of "world literature"
(Weltliteratur) and Russian Formalists credited Alexander Veselovsky with laying the groundwork for the
discipline. Viktor Zhirmunsky, for instance, referred to Veselovsky as "the most remarkable representative of
comparative literary study in Russian and European scholarship of the nineteenth century" (Zhirmunsky qtd. in
Rachel Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance [Cambridge UP, 1998. 17]; see
also David Damrosch[7] During the late 19th century, comparatists such as Fyodor Buslaev were chiefly
concerned with deducing the purported Zeitgeist or "spirit of the times", which they assumed to be embodied in
the literary output of each nation. Although many comparative works from this period would be judged
chauvinistic, Eurocentric, or even racist by present-day standards, the intention of most scholars during this
period was to increase the understanding of other cultures, not to assert superiority over them (although
politicians and others from outside the field sometimes used their works for this purpose).

French School
From the early part of the 20th century until WWII, the field was characterised by a notably empiricist and
positivist approach, termed the "French School", in which scholars examined works forensically, looking for
evidence of "origins" and "influences" between works from different nations. Thus a scholar might attempt to
trace how a particular literary idea or motif traveled between nations over time. In the French School of

Comparative Literature, the study of influences and mentalities dominates. Today, the French School practices
the nation-state approach of the discipline although it also promotes the approach of a "European Comparative
Literature."

German School
Like the French School, German Comparative Literature has its origins in the late 19th century. After World
War II, the discipline developed to a large extent owing to one scholar in particular, Peter Szondi (19291971),
a Hungarian who taught at the Free University Berlin. Szondi's work in Allgemeine und Vergleichende
Literaturwissenschaft (German for "General and Comparative Literary Studies") included the genre of drama,
lyric (in particular hermetic) poetry, and hermeneutics: "Szondi's vision of Allgemeine und Vergleichende
Literaturwissenschaft became evident in both his policy of inviting international guest speakers to Berlin and his
introductions to their talks. Szondi welcomed, among others, Jacques Derrida (before he attained worldwide
recognition), Pierre Bourdieu and Lucien Goldman from France, Paul de Man from Zrich, Gershom Sholem
from Jerusalem, Theodor W. Adorno from Frankfurt, Hans Robert Jauss from the then young University of
Konstanz, and from the US Ren Wellek, Geoffrey Hartman and Peter Demetz (all at Yale), along with the
liberal publicist Lionel Trilling. The names of these visiting scholars, who form a programmatic network and a
methodological canon, epitomise Szondi's conception of comparative literature. German comparatists working in
East Germany, however, were not invited, nor were recognised colleagues from France or the Netherlands. Yet
while he was oriented towards the West and the new allies of West Germany and paid little attention to
comparatists in Eastern Europe, his conception of a transnational (and transatlantic) comparative literature was
very much influenced by East European literary theorists of the Russian and Prague schools of structuralism,
from whose works Ren Wellek, too, derived many of his concepts, concepts that continue to have profound
implications for comparative literary theory today" ... A manual published by the University of Munich lists 31
departments which offer a diploma in comparative literature in Germany, albeit some only as a 'minor'. These
are: Augsburg, Bayreuth, Free University Berlin, Technical University Berlin, Bochum, Bonn, ChemnitzZwickau, Erfurt, Erlangen-Nrnberg, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt an der Oder, Gieen, Gttingen,
Jena, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Konstanz, Leipzig, Mainz, Mnchen, Mnster, Osnabrck, Paderborn, Potsdam,
Rostock, Saarbrcken, Siegen, Stuttgart, Tbingen (http://www.germ.uni-tuebingen.de/abteilungen/Komparatisti
k/index.html), Wuppertal. (Der kleine Komparatist [2003]). This situation is undergoing rapid change, however,
since many universities are adapting to the new requirements of the recently introduced Bachelor and Master of
Arts. German comparative literature is being squeezed by the traditional philologies on the one hand and more
vocational programmes of study on the other which seek to offer students the practical knowledge they need for
the working world (e.g., 'Applied Literature'). With German universities no longer educating their students
primarily for an academic market, the necessity of a more vocational approach is becoming ever more
evident"[8]

American (USA) School

Reacting to the French School, postwar scholars, collectively termed the "American School", sought to return
the field to matters more directly concerned with literary criticism, de-emphasising the detective work and
detailed historical research that the French School had demanded. The American School was more closely
aligned with the original internationalist visions of Goethe and Posnett (arguably reflecting the postwar desire for
international cooperation), looking for examples of universal human "truths" based on the literary archetypes that
appeared throughout literatures from all times and places.
Prior to the advent of the American School, the scope of Comparative Literature in the West was typically
limited to the literatures of Western Europe and Anglo-America, predominantly literature in English, German and
French literature, with occasional forays into Italian literature (primarily for Dante) and Spanish literature

(primarily for Cervantes). One monument to the approach of this period is Erich Auerbach's book Mimesis, a
survey of techniques of realism in texts whose origins span several continents and three thousand years.
The approach of the American School would be familiar to current practitioners of Cultural Studies and is even
claimed by some to be the forerunner of the Cultural Studies boom in universities during the 1970s and 1980s.
The field today is highly diverse: for example, comparatists routinely study Chinese literature, Arabic literature
and the literatures of most other major world languages and regions as well as English and continental European
literatures.

Current developments
There is a movement among comparativists in the US and elsewhere to re-focus the discipline away from the
nation-based approach with which it has previously been associated towards a cross-cultural approach that
pays no heed to national borders. Works of this nature include Alamgir Hashmi's The Commonwealth,
Comparative Literature and the World, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Death of a Discipline, David
Damrosch's What is World Literature?, Steven Ttsy de Zepetnek's concept of "comparative cultural
studies", and Pascale Casanova's The World Republic of Letters. It remains to be seen whether this approach
will prove successful given that Comparative Literature had its roots in nation-based thinking and much of the
literature under study still concerns issues of the nation-state. Given developments in the studies of globalization
and interculturalism, Comparative Literature, already representing a wider study than the single-language nationstate approach, may be well suited to move away from the paradigm of the nation-state. While in the West
Comparative Literature is experiencing institutional constriction, there are signs that in many parts of the world
the discipline is thriving, especially in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. Current trends
in Transnational studies also reflect the growing importance of post-colonial literary figures such as Giannina
Braschi, J. M. Coetzee, Maryse Cond, Earl Lovelace, V. S. Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje, Wole Soyinka,
Derek Walcott, and Lasana M. Sekou. For recent post-colonial studies in North America see George Elliott
Clarke. Directions Home: Approaches to African-Canadian Literature. (University of Toronto Press,
2011), Joseph Pivato. Echo: Essays in Other Literatures. (Guernica Editions, 2003), and "The Sherbrooke
School of Comparative Canadian Literature". (Inquire, 2011). In the area of comparative studies of literature
and the other arts see Linda Hutcheon's work on Opera and her A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd. ed. (Routledge,
2012).

See also
Literary criticism
Literary translation
Translation criticism

References
1.
2.
3.
4.

http://www.brown.edu/academics/comparative-literature/about
http://complit.princeton.edu/undergraduate-program/careers-comparative-literature
Placement of 1996-97 PhDs in Classics, Modern Languages, and Linguistics, retrieved Dec 18, 2011
Lernout, Geert (2006), "Comparative Literature in the Low Countries", Comparative Critical Studies, British
Comparative Literature, 3 (1): 3746, retrieved Dec 18, 2011, "When I tell members of the general public, in
airplanes or hotel bars, what I do for a living, the most common reply has always been: 'What do you guys
compare literature to?' Nowadays I tend to answer: 'With everything else.' If I look at the courses I have given
over the years, this is not even an exaggeration I have taught courses on literature 'And Very Nearly
Everything Else': literature and music, literature and the arts, literature and science, psychology, religion,
sociology, history, philosophy. The trouble with literature, however defined, is that you cannot even begin to
grasp its complexity if you do not fully understand its relationship to, well, everything else. In my personal life

5.
6.
7.
8.

this has meant that I have found the perfect academic excuse for an unquenchable thirst for all kinds of
information, some more, some less arcane (less charitably it could be argued that this has saved me from
having to make up my Kierkegaardian mind about what I really want to do with my life)."
Selected Comparative Literature and Comparative Humanities Journals, retrieved Dec 18, 2011
Bibliography of (Text)Books in Comparative Literature, retrieved Dec 18, 2011
Damrosch, David (2006), "Rebirth of a Discipline: The Global Origins of Comparative Studies", Comparative
Critical Studies, British Comparative Literature, 3 (1): 99112, retrieved Dec 18, 2011
Lubrich, Oliver (2006), "Comparative Literature in, from and beyond Germany", Comparative Critical
Studies, British Comparative Literature, 3 (1): 4767, retrieved Dec 18, 2011

Ttsy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Multilingual Bibliography of (Text)Books in Comparative Literature,

World Literature(s), and Comparative Cultural Studies." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture (Library) (1999-): <https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/comparativeliteraturebooks>.
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture <https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb>.
Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies. Ed.
Steven Ttsy de Zepetnek and Tutun Mukherjee. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India, 2013.
New Work in Comparative Literature in Europe. Ed. Marina Grishakova, Lucia Boldrini, and
Matthew Arnolds. Special Issue CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15.7 (2013):
<https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol15/iss7/>.

External links
A list of comparative literature departments and programs in the US, Canada, and UK (http://www.comp
arativeliterature.net/)
AILC/ICLA: Association internationale de littrature compare / International Comparative Literature
Association (http://www.ailc-icla.org/site/)
REELC/ENCLS: Rseau europen d'tudes littraires compares/European Network for Comparative
Literary Studies (http://eurolit.net/)
BCLA: British Comparative Literature Association (http://www.bcla.org/index.htm) (with lists of national
comparative literature associations worldwide)
CCLA/ACLC: Canadian Comparative Literature Association (http://complit.ca/) / Association
Canadienne de Littrature Compare
Slovenian Comparative Literature Association (http://sdpk.si/)
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Categories: Comparative literature Literature by nationality
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