Chapter- I

Introduction: Comparative Literature

The term ‘comparative literature’ came into being early in the Nineteenth
century when the discourse of national literatures came to the fore. Previously, in
eighteenth century, no proper sense of comparative literature was prevalent and
the scholars loosely tried to define and interconnect languages and disciplines.
Rather than discipline, comparative literature should be simply a method of
approaching literatures. The role of the readers or comparators herein is crucial
one. The old canonical texts need to undergo the test of time and are needed to
be studied with their historical contexts in view of the current parameters, which
would not prove harmful to the legacy. Benedetto Croce, the great Italian critic,
was skeptical about comparative literature who believed that comparative
literature was an obscure idea that disguised the obvious. According to him, the
proper object of the study was literary history. According to Croce,
The comparative history of literature is history
understood in its true sense as a complete
explanation of the literary work, encompassed in all its
relationships, disposed in the composite whole of
universal literary history ( where else could it ever
be placed?) seen in those connections and
preparations that are its raison d’etre.1
Croce, in his view, is doubtlessly right that the proper object of the
comparative literature is literary history. Only thing that needs to be kept in
mind is that it should ‘be understood not only as the history of the moment of
actual textual production but also as the history of the reception of texts across
time’, according to Susan Bassnett. A text is to be read or say re-read taking
into account the socio-political context and hence the re-reading may demand
some concession on the part of the reader. To some extent, the purpose of this

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 research is to address the canonical status quo of the texts of both the play-
wrights.
Comparative literature aims at studying different literatures crossing the
spheres of one particular country. In particular context, it tries to establish the
relationship between literature on one hand and other areas of knowledge,
customs and beliefs on the other hand. Rapid growth of science and technology
has brought different countries very close and this has resulted in an increasing
curiosity to discover those aspects of literary art practised all over the globe
which on account of their similarities and differences can be treated as the
fundamentals of literary art in general. It is hoped that such discovery will help in
establishing the common characteristics of all great literatures, despite their
apparent diversities. Francis Bacon, an eminent essayist of sixteenth century,
wanted us “to read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for
granted, nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.”2
Comparative literature as a branch of study is a discipline to juxtapose
different literatures across cultures and languages. Over the period of time, the
approaches and perspectives of this discipline have undergone many changes.
Ever since its outset, the eminent scholars have tried to define comparative
literature each with their own perspectives. Let us look at few definitions of
comparative literature. According to William Posnett, “Initial concern of
comparative literature is to compare one author with another, one literature with
another, the literature of one period with that of another, one literary genre with
another, literature itself with the other arts.”3
It is understood mostly as binary studies, i.e. study of two authors, two
books, two languages, literatures of two nations etc. According to Franciose Jost,
Comparative literature represents a philosophy of
letters, a new humanism. Its fundamental principle
consists of the belief in the wholeness of the literary
phenomenon, in the negation of national autarkies in
cultural economics, and as a consequence, in the
necessity of a new axiology... comparative literature

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 represents more than an academic discipline. It is an
overall view of literature, of world of letters, a
humanistic ecology, a literary Weltanschaung, a
vision of the cultural universe.4
For some of the writers, comparative literature should uphold the idea of
‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ and so they take it as a kind approach illumining the
concept of world religion. The implied denotation is that when the comparatist or
simply a reader takes up good works, all cultural nuances vanish. Here art is
seen as a medium of universal harmony and the comparatist as the one who
facilitates the spread of that harmony.
In the essay ‘General, Comparative and National Literature’, Rene Wellek
and Austen Warren note that “the classical definition of comparative literature lies
in the study of oral literature.”5 Comparative literature is also identified with the
study of literature in its totality, with ‘world literature’, with ‘general’ or universal
literature. For example, Paul Van Tieghem notes that, “Movements and fashions
of literatures that transcend national lines are studied by ‘general’ literature, while
comparative literature studies the interrelationships between two or more
literatures.”6
Comparative Literature is defined as the examination and analysis of the
relationships and similarities of the literatures of different people and nations. The
comparative study of literature is compared with the comparative study of
religions. We see little evidence of it before the 19th century. ‘Weltliteratur’, the
term coined by Goethe, means approximately, literature that is of all nations and
peoples, and which, by a reciprocal exchange of ideas, mediates between
nations and helps to enrich the spirit of ‘World Literature’.7
Comparative literature is also seen as a discipline that can transcend the
frontiers of single language and national literatures. For a comparatist, any
literature is basically a literature that has to be studied with reference to other
literatures, generally on a bi- or monolingual or national basis.8
All these definitions indicate that comparative literature was initially
understood as something that had evolved towards the attempting of a kind of

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universal literature. In other words, it was an ideal practice where literature was
understood as something that transcended all values and barriers. For example,
as Henry Remak points,
Comparative literature is the study of literatures
beyond the confines of the particular country and the
study of relationships between literatures on one hand
and other areas of knowledge and beliefs such as the
arts (e.g. painting, sculpture, architecture, and music),
philosophy, history, social sciences, religion etc. on
the other. In brief, it is the comparison of one literature
with another or others, and the comparison of
literature with other spheres of human expression.9
Initially, European and Euro-American literature were considered as ‘world
literature’. However, later the expression ‘world literature’ represented broader
views. A major change in the perception of the discipline can be seen when Rene
Etiemble, in his article ‘The Crisis In Comparative Literature’, made a plea for the
expansion of comparative literature beyond its original European and Euro-
American contexts and against all provincialism and chauvinism. He argued that
the current theoretical effort is to cope with this need to ‘de-westernize’ the
framing concepts of literary life, which an expansion beyond the European and
Euro-American cultural systems entails.10 Jean Marie Carre maintained that
comparative literature is a branch of literary history. Paul Van Tieghem had
declared that,” a clear and distinct idea of comparative literature supposes first of
all a clear and a distinct idea of literary history of which it is a branch.”11
In this way, the concept of comparative literature, confined within certain
meanings as the literature of nations, literature bound to languages, literature
limited to its author etc., saw a significant shift. Fokkema Douwe deserves a
special mention here. He brings in a new paradigm of cultural relativism to
comparative literature. Cultural relativism, as he says, “refers to a moral stance
which may influence the scholar in his selection of research methods and
theoretical positions.”12 Cultural relativism proposes that all truths are relative to

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the individual and his/her environment. All ethical, religious, political and
aesthetic beliefs are truths that are relative to the cultural identity of the
individual. He observes that comparative literature focuses on the historicity of
the literary text, that is to say, the specific circumstances under which it is
produced and received. In studying texts in different languages and from various
cultures, it makes use of the outcomes of linguistics, semiotics, aesthetics,
sociology and psychology.13 The concept of the universality of literature or the
belief that there exists a single world literature prevents one from considering the
differences that can not overcome the cross-cultural barriers. Though cultural
relativism stresses on the contrasts in different cultures, its unqualified
application to epistemology stops us from analyzing the otherness of a foreign
culture and closes the most important space where such otherness provides
condition for meaningful communication.
Yet another shift in comparative literature was brought in by the
introduction of systems analysis. The Russian formalist Yury Tynjanov,
considered to be the initiator of the systems approach, made it clear that
‘literature’ is both autonomous and heleronomous, i.e., that it is both self-
regulated and conditioned by other systems. Polysystem analysis was introduced
to the discipline by Andre Lefevere, one of the important theorists of comparative
literature. According to him, the concept of system allows us to describe power in
its various ramifications. He says,
If a society can be described as a system, it will
consist of different sub-systems, such as literature,
medicine, law each with its own discourse. The
literary system inside a society is controlled on the
basis of a poetics by those we shall call ‘Re-writers’,
i.e., translators, the critics, historiographers and
anthologizers of literature. A poetics then is a code
with which a literary system operates, which sets the
parameters for the writing of literature and to a certain

5
 extent also the discourse on literature, in a certain
society at a certain time.14
Reference to the cultural analysis made in the context of analysis of
literature, gave altogether a different dimension to the ‘literature analysis’.
Edward Said is one of the important scholars of comparative literature who has
worked in the area of cultural analysis. In the process of evaluating what
‘Orientalism’ is, Said discusses the relationships between literary culture and
other areas in a society, which is an important aspect of comparative literature.
He talks about how certain nations are built around certain disciplines to
segregate them from their varied possibilities. He says, too often literature and
culture are treated as if they are politically, even historically innocent. He says,
No one has ever devised a method of detaching the
scholar from the circumstances of life, from the fact of
his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a
class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or from the
mere act of being a member of a society.15
Therefore, society and literary culture have to be understood and studied
together. Changes in comparative literary study approach came along with the
changes that emerged in literary studies in general. Bacon’s suggestion to weigh
and consider can appropriately be applied to the crux or soul of comparative
study. There should be an earnest attempt to hold a ‘jugalbandhi’ between
literatures of home and abroad. T.S.Eliot prescribes analysis and comparison to
know the worth of works under knife. However, it seems difficult to separate
judgment or at least inclination from comparison. Broadly speaking, comparative
literature, as an upshot, aims at de-alienating literatures. As a discipline or a
method to approach, it implies transcending the frontiers of single language and
national literatures. As the terms ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ are being redefined and
their premises are being gauged new ‘measure-taps’, comparative literary
studies in India are also thriving. Last two decades have witnessed an urge
amongst the Indian scholars in English to know and establish the real worth,
significance and viability of Indian literatures and Poetics on the horizons of the

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world. ‘Hand-cuffed to history’, we have over sighted the indigenous ‘products’. In
the time of globalization when everything is being transported and exchanged,
why not literature? In recent years, post-colonial theory and the literature have
gained a great deal of attention. However, the studies of post-colonial traditions
of once colonized countries are often neglected or treated as a bete-noire kind of
a thing. As a result, many academicians who deal with post-colonial literatures
often dissociate these writers from their pre-colonial past. Let us give justice to
the word ‘post’ in post-colonial. The need of the time is to arrive at a certain
general understanding of literary activities of man and to help create a universal
poetics. In this reference, while speaking about ‘Weltliteratur’, in 1827, Goethe
said, “National literature now rather an unmeaning term; the epoch of world-
literature is at hand and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.”
Comparative literature has interdisciplinary nature which means that
sometimes the comparatists maverickly exhibit their acquaintances with
translation studies, sociology, critical theory, cultural, religious and historical
studies. This eclecticism of the field has lead to be charged of dilettantism and is
often charged of insufficiently well-defined. Time to time, the exercise to establish
the field as a perfect discipline has been done. Since World War-II, there have
been four major international conferences in comparative literature in 1965,
1975, 1993 and 2004 and all the scholars addressed the issues such as theoretic
rigor, linguistic incompatibility and the fundamental goals of the field.
In the English-speaking world, ‘Comparative Literature’, the work
published by New Zealand scholar H.M. Posnett in 1886 is considered
foundational. However, the antecedents, mentioned antecedently, can be found
in the ideas of Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe. At the outset, the comparatist
chiefly focused on inferring the purported zeitgeist which they thought to have
been expressed in the literature of each nation. The intention of these
comparatists was to increase the understanding of other cultures but their works
suffered from present-day standards, from chauvinism or even racism. Then
came the phase of early part of Twentieth century during which the French
school tried to trace how a particular idea or motif travelled between nations over

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time which proved nothing but a ‘fact-hunting’ kind of activity. They tried to detect
the ‘origins’ of and ‘influences’ that worked upon the works under comparison.
Then the American school of post-war-scholars aligned to look for examples of
universal human ‘truths’ based on literary archetypes. This school was the fore-
runner of the cultural studies that witnessed boom during 1970s and 1980s.
Today the field of comparative study has become diverse and eclectic. The
enfant-terribles like Gayatri Chakravarti Spivak, today advocate a cross-cultural
approach that pays no heed to national boundaries.
The purpose, here, of comparative study of Shakespeare’s comedies and
dramas of Bhasa is to discover certain common aspects of their art, dramatic
technique, characterization, thematic pattern and vision of life which may form a
common meeting-ground for both of them. The objectives of this dissertation are
as under:

¾ To compare two different literatures of East and West and

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 NOTES AND REFERENCES

1
Croce, Benedetto, Comparative Literature, Comparative Literature: The
Early Years, Edited by Hans-Joachim Schultz and Philip H. Rhein,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973, p.222.
2
Bacon, Francis, ‘Of Studies’, Bacon’s Essays, Edited by J.Lahiri &
A.L.Ganguli, Lakshmi Narayan Agarwal Educational Publishers, Agra,
p.76.
3
Posnett,William, in his book called Comparative Literature published in
1886 talks about the discipline, as cited in Nagendra Ed. ‘Comparative
Literature’, New Delhi, University of Delhi, 1977, p.1.
4
Jost, Franciose, A Philosophy of Letters, ‘Introduction To Comparative
Literature’, New York, The University of Illinios, 1974, p.29.
5
Wellek, Rene and Warren, Austen, ‘General, Comparative and National
Literature’ in Rene Wellek and Austen Warren Eds., Theory of Literature,
New York, Penguin Book, 1978, as cited in ‘Aesthetics of Comparative
Literature’, <http://dspace.vidyanidhi.org.in.pdf/html> p.6.
6
Ibid.
7
Cuddon,J.A., ‘A Dictionary of Literary Terms’, London, Andre Deutsh
Ltd.,1977 as cited in <http://dspace.vidyanidhi.org.in.pdf/html> p.6.
8
Jain, Nirmala, ‘Comparative Literature: The Indian Context’, in Amiya Dev
and Sisir Kumar Das, Eds., Comparative Literature: Theory and Practice,
Shimla, HAS and Allied Publishers, 1988.
9
Remak, Henry, ‘Comparative Literature: Its Definition and Function’, in
Newton P. Stalknecht and Horst Frenz, Eds., Comparative Literature:
Method and Perspective, Edwardsville: Southern Illionois University
Press, 1961.
10
Etiemble, Rene, Compararison n’est pas raison. La crise de la literature
comparee, Paris: Gillimard, 1963, The Crisis in Comparative Literature,
Trans., Geprges Joyaux and Herbert Weisinger, East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press,1966, as quoted in Gillespie, Gerald, ‘The
Internationalization of Comparative Literature in the Second Half of the
Twentieth Century’ in Nemoianu, Virgil, Ed., ‘Multi-Comparative Theory,
Definitions, Realities’, New York, New York Council on National
Literatures, 1996, p.21.

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 11
Citation in Jost, Franciose, A Philosophy of Letters, New York, The
University of Illinios, 1974, p.25.
12
Douwe,Fokkema., ‘Cultural Relativism Reconsidered: Comparative
Literature and Intercultural Relations’, in ‘Issues in Comparative Literature-
Selected Essays’, Calcutta, Papyrus, 1987, p.1.
13
Ibid., p.64.
14
Lefevere, Andre. Systems Thinking and Cultural Relativism, Essays in
Comparative Literature, Papyrus, 1988, p.47 (A poetics consists of two
components: one is an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs,
symbols, prototypical characters and situations; the other is a concept of
what the role of literature is or should be in a society. This concept plays
an important part in the selection of themes which must be relevant to
society for a work of literature to be noticed.)
15
Edward H. Said, Orientalism, New Delhi, Penguine, 1991, p.10.

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