Transcript Some basic concepts

What is Comparative
Literature？
Comparative Literature
as a Discipline: its definitions and
scope
Preface
• It can almost be argued that anyone who has an interest
in books embarks on the road towards what might be
termed comparative literature: reading Chaucer, we
come across Boccaccio; we can trace Shakespeare's
source materials through Latin, French Spanish and
Italian; we can study the ways in which Romanticism
developed across Europe at a similar moment in time,
follow the process through which Baudelaire's
fascination with Edgar Allan Poe enriched his own
writing, consider how many English novelists learned
from the great nineteenth-century Russian writers (in
translation, of course), compare how James Joyce
borrowed from Italo Svevo.
• When we read Clarice Lispector (Brazilian
writer) we are reminded of Jean Rhys
(Dominican writer), who in turn recalls Djuna
Barnes (American writer) and Anaïs Nin (French
writer). There is no limit to the list of examples
we could devise. Once we begin to read we
move across frontiers, making associations and
connections, no longer reading within a single
literature but within the great open space of
Literature with a capital L.
• At this juncture, one could be forgiven for
assuming that comparative literature is
nothing more than common sense, an
inevitable stage reading, made
increasingly easier by international
marketing of books and by the availability
of translations.
• But if we shift perspective slightly and
look again at the term “Comparative
literature”, what we find instead is a history
of violent debate that goes right back to
the earliest usage of the term at the
beginning of the nineteenth century and
continues still today.
• Critics at the end of the twentieth century, in the
age of post-modernism, still wrestle with the
same questions that were posed more than a
century ago: What is the object of study in
comparative literature? How can comparison be
the object of anything? If individual literatures
have a canon, what might a comparative canon
be? How does the comparatist select what to
compare? Is comparative literature a discipline?
Or is it simply a field of study?
• These and a great many other questions
refuse to go away, and since the 1950s we
have been hearing all too frequently about
what René Wellek defined as “the crisis of
Comparative Literature.”
• Comparative literature as a term seems to
arouse strong passions, both for and
against. As early as 1903, Benedetto
Croce argued that comparative literature
was a non-subject, contemptuously
dismissing the suggestion that it might be
seen as a separate discipline.
• He discussed the definition of
comparative literature as the exploration of
“the vicissitudes, alterations,
developments and reciprocal differences”
of themes and literary ideas across
literatures, and concluded that “there is no
study more arid than researches of this
sort”. This kind of work, Croce maintained,
is to be classified “in the category of
erudition purely and simply”.
• But other scholars made grandiose claims
for comparative literature. Charles Mills
Gayley, one of the founders of North
American comparative literature,
proclaimed that the working premise of the
student of comparative literature was:
• literature as a distinct and integral medium of
thought, a common institutional expression of
humanity; differentiated, to be sure, by the social
conditions of the individual, by racial, historical,
cultural and linguistic influences, opportunities,
and restrictions, but, irrespective of age or guise,
prompted by the common needs and aspiration
of man, sprung from common faculties,
psychological and physiological, and obeying
common laws of material and mode, of the
individual and social humanity.
• Remarkably similar sentiments were
expressed in 1974 by François Jost, when
he claimed that “national literature” cannot
constitute an intelligible field of study
because of its “arbitrarily limited
perspective”, and that comparative
literature:
• represents more than an academic
discipline. It is an overall view of literature,
of the world of letters, a humanistic
ecology, a literary Weltanschauung , a
vision of the cultural universe, inclusive
and comprehensive.
• Jost, like Gayley and others before him,
highly valued the role of comparatists.
They believed that art is an instrument of
universal harmony and the comparatist is
one who facilitates the spread of that
harmony.
• Moreover, the comparatist must possess
special skills. Wellek and Warren in their
Theory of Literature, a book that was
enormously significant in comparative
literature when it first appeared in 1949,
suggest that:
• Comparative Literature...will make high
demands on the linguistic proficiencies of
our scholars. It asks for a widening of
perspectives, a suppression of local and
provincial sentiments, not easy to achieve.
• The comparatist is here depicted as
someone with a vocation, as a kind of
international ambassador working in the
comparative literatures of united nations.
• Regardless of all these controversies,
comparative literature still remains an
important academic domain both in China
and in the world. It is essential to for us to
get a rough idea of what it is and what it
studies before we move on to examine in
detail its methodologies and new
developments.
Comparative literature in terms of
national literature
• The most popular notion is that
comparative literature studies literatures of
two or more nations.
• The term comparative literature is usually
understood to mean what it suggests: a
mutual, even a systematic, comparison of
national literature.
• The scope of comparative literature in this
sense is often defined in terms of
nationality or geographical area. Under
this notion, a comparison of Xu Zhimo (徐
志摩) and Hardy is comparative literature;
but, regrettably, a comparison of Li Bo (李
白) and Du Fu (杜甫) is not.
• But what is national literature？
National literature
• A popular and tautological (that is,
repetition of same sense in different words)
definition: English literature is the literature
of England, and Portuguese, of Portugal.
• A scholarly definition circumscribed by two
combined criteria: on the one hand, it consists of
works that adhere to identical codes of
aesthetics and that are consequently written in
the same language; on the other hand, their
authors have the same cultural background. It is
that body of books generally considered to be
the expression of one specific culture, by means
of a common vocabulary and a common syntax.
Comparative literature
as presented by Wellek and Warren
In practice, the term “comparative” literature
has covered and still covers rather distinct
fields of study.
• It may mean, first, the study of oral
literature, especially of folk-tale themes
and their migration; of how and when they
have entered “higher,” “artistic” literature.
• This definition of comparative literature echoes
with Posnett’s belief that the scope of
comparative literature can really start from a clan
within a small area or a city commonwealth and
then enlarge it through a nation or country
towards the whole world. And what Robert J.
Clements calls the three major “dimensions” of
American or European comparative literary
studies – Western Heritage (or Western
Literature), East-West, and World Literature –
are in fact scopes in the sense.
• Another sense of “comparative” literature
confines it to the study of relationships
between two or more literatures. This is
the use established by the flourishing
school of French comparatists headed by
Fernand Baldensperger and gathered
around the Revue de littéraire comparée
(《比较文学杂志》）.
• The school has especially given attention…to
such questions as the reputation and
penetration, the influence and fame, of Goethe
in France and England, of Ossian and Carlyle
and Schiller in France. It has developed a
methodology which, going beyond the collection
of information concerning reviews, translations,
and influences, considers carefully the image,
the concept of a particular author at a particular
time, such diverse factors of transmission as
periodicals, translators, salons, and travelers,
and the “receiving factors,” the special
atmosphere and literary situation into which the
foreign author is imported.
Comparative literature in terms of
world literature
• A third concept identifies comparative
literature with the study of literature in its
totality, with “world literature,” with
“general” or “universal” literature.
World Literature
• “World literature” was used by Goethe to indicate a
time when all literature would become one. It is the
ideal of the unification of all literatures into one great
synthesis, where each nation would play its part in a
universal concert. But Goethe himself saw that this is
a very distant ideal, that no single nation is willing to
give up its individuality. Today we are possibly even
further removed from such a state of amalgamation,
and we would argue that we cannot even seriously
wish that the diversities of national literatures should
be obliterated.
• “World literature” is frequently used in a
third sense. It may mean the great
treasure house of the classics, such as
Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare,
and Goethe, whose reputation has spread
all over the world and has lasted a
considerable time. It thus has become a
synonym for “masterpieces,” for a
selection from literature which has its
critical and pedagogic justification.
General literature
• A possibly preferable substitute for “world
literature” is “general literature.” Originally it was
used to mean poetics or theory and principles of
literature. Paul Van Tieghem has tried to capture
it for a special conception in contrast to
“comparative literature.” According to him,
“general literature” studies those movements
and fashions of literature which transcend
national lines, while “comparative literature”
studies the interrelationships between two or
more literatures.
Other theories concerning
comparative literature
• Some comparatists proclaim that that
comparative literature actually does not
compare at all. In the “General
Introduction” to his Comparative Literature:
Matter and Method, A. Owen Aldridge thus
begins his second paragraph:
• It is now generally agreed that comparative
literature does not compare national literatures
in the sense of setting one against another.
Instead it provides a method of broadening
one’s perspective in the approach to single
works of literature – a way of looking beyond the
narrow boundaries of national frontiers in order
to discern trends and movements in various
national cultures and to see the relation between
literature and other spheres of human activity.
Responses to this not comparing
methodology
• In Aldridge’s book, five categories of
comparative literature are edited: Literary
Criticism and Theory, Literary Movements,
Literary Themes, Literary Forms, and Literary
Relations. Is there any one of them, we may
ask, that does not compare by setting one
literature against another? Is not literary
criticism or theory, for instance, the result of
reading this author and that author and then
comparing them in mind (if not on paper) by
setting one against another or against
something else?
• Likewise, how can a literary movement, or
theme, or form, or relation be better understood
without comparing the elements that make up
the movement, theme, form, or relation, or
without comparing this movement with that
movement, this theme with that theme, etc.? It
is often not necessary, of course, to show one’s
comparing process (which is essentially a
process in mind) on paper or anywhere else.
But the task of “setting one thing against
another” is almost indispensable to any serious
study of things.
• But, of course, when Aldridge says that
“comparative literature does not compare
national literatures in the sense of setting
one against another,” he is not trying to
negate the value of the comparative
method, but trying perhaps to discourage
a sort of comparative practice: namely, the
mere setting one thing against another
without further work for a meaningful
result.
A summary
• Comparative Literature is the discipline of
studying literature transnationally,
sometimes postnationally--across political
boundaries, time periods, languages,
genres, and across the lines of
demarcation between literature and other
cultural productions.
• Comparative Literature entails not only the
study of various literatures in a variety of
languages, but also the study of the
connections (and differences) between
different modes of thinking and of
representing the world. Thus, a true
"comparatist" is interested in the ways in
which a variety of concepts, images and
histories have enriched or complicated our
cultural ideas.
• In addition to thinking about the ways in which
our literatures relate to each other, we are also
concerned with examining the ways in which
what we call "literature" is associated with "sister
arts", like film or painting, and with mental
sciences and frames of knowing, such as those
supplied by, e.g., anthropology, psychology, and
philosophy. Comparative Literature is an
entryway to World Literature, a means of
exploring what various peoples and individuals
have thought about being in the world.
• In brief, it is the comparison of one
literature with another or others, and the
comparison of literature with other spheres
of human expression.
Some excerpts concerning the
definition of CL
• 比较文学是国际间的文学关系史。比较文学家跨
越语言和民族的界限，注视着两国或几国文学之
间主题、书籍、情感的交流。他的工作方式必须
与研究课题的多样性相适应。不管他打算从哪一
方面的研究，都必须具备一些先决条件，那就是
必须通晓几国文学，必须能够阅读几国语言，必
须知道何处找到必要的参考书。--基亚：《比较
文学》第12-13页。
• 目前大家都同意，比较文学并不是把国别文学拿
来一国对一国进行比较。而是在研究一部文学作
品时，比较文学提供了扩大研究者视野的方法—
使他的视野超越国家疆域的狭隘界限，看到不同
国家文化的倾向和运动，看到文学与人类活动其
他领域之间的关系……简言之，比较文学是从超
越一国民族文学的角度或者从与其他一门或几门
知识的相互关联中，对文学现象进行研究。奥尔
德里奇：《比较文学：内容和方法》第1页。
• 比较文学研究超越一国范围的文学，并研
究文学跟其他知识和信仰的领域（诸如艺
术、哲学、历史、社会科学、其他科学、
宗教等）之间的关系。简而言之，它把一
国文学同另一国或几国文学进行比较，保
文学和人类所表达的其他领域相比较。雷
迈克：《比较文学：方法与观点》第1页。
• 西方文学组成了各国民族文学的历史共同体。这
个共同体本身则体现在每一民族文学之中。每一
首抒情诗、每一部史诗或每一个剧本，不论其各
自的特点如何，都是部分的借鉴于共同的材料，
并使这个共同体因此得以巩固和永久化。对文学
艺术作品的创作者来说，过去和现今的文学构成
了想象和形式的主要背景，他就在这样的背景中
创作。文学运动和文学评论也证实了西方文学这
个基本的统一体。比较文学建立在对西方文学的
这一看法上。他从国际的角度来观察文学研究的
对象—版本、类别、运动、批评，正是在这点上，
比较文学有助于了解整个文学。科修斯：《文学
研究序言》第5页）
• 比较文学：分析性的描述、方法上的辨别
式的比较；通过历史、批评和哲学对不同
语言之间或不同文化之间的文学现象进行
综合性解释，以便更好地懂得文学是人类
精神的特别功能。 比苏瓦、卢梭：《比较
文学》，第197页。
What students of comparative
literature learn: courses
• 联合国教科文组织在“教育的国际标准分
类”（International Standard
Classification of Education ）中对比较文
学其目前的做法、或者将来应当作的方面
，作了切合实际的阐述。
• 一般至少在修满中等教育后方可修比较文
学学科，它设有下列学位：文学学士、文
学硕士和博士，或其他同等学位。授课方
式主要有：课堂讲授、座谈会、小组讨论
和研究。
• 学士学位的课程主要研究国际文学关系和
文化关系。其主要课程通常包括以下几个
方面：作家和作品在其诞生地以外国家流
传、接收和所产生的影响的情况；国际文
学运动的传播和演化；类别、主题、题材
的特征及相互关系；民间文学和民间传说
；批评；美学；文学之间的媒介和关系，
以及文学和其他学科之间的关系。背景知
识一般包括历史、社会科学和行为科学、
哲学、宗教、神学和自然科学。
• 研究生学位的课程主要是关于国际关系和
文化关系的高级研究。重点放在研究工作
上，以学术论文为考察依据。课程和研究
项目所涉及的主要内容包括：国际文学运
动的起源和演变、民间文学和民间传说、
批评、美学、媒介、史诗、传奇、悲剧、
喜剧、现代戏剧、当代小说、比较文学研
究问题、文学研究中的比较法、当代文学
的势力和比较文学中的研究技巧。
国外一些大学的比较文学课程
• See PDF files.
Study Questions
• Give a working definition of comparative
literature by integrating what we have
talked about in class?
• Explain: national literature, world literature,
and general literature.
• Comment: Literature is at once national
and universal.
• What is your opinion of the future of
comparative literature as a discipline?