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Introduction: What is Comparative

Literature Today?

Sooner or later, anyone who c1aims ro be working in comparative

literature has to try and answer the inevitable question: What is it?
The simplesr answer is thar comparative literature tnvolves the study
of texrs across culrures, thar ir is interdisciplinary and rhat ir is
concerned with patterns of connection in literatures across both
tIme and space.
Most people do nor sean wirh comparative !iterarure, chey end up
with it in sorne way or other, rravelling towards it from diHerent
poinrs of depanure. Sometimes che Journey begins wirh a desire ro
move beyond the boundaries of a single subject area thar might
appear to be coo constraining, at orher times a reader may be
impelled to follow up what appear to be similarities between texts
or aurhors from di{ferem cultural conrexts. And sorne readers may
simply be foUowing che view propounded by Matthew Arnold in his
Inaugural Lecture at Oxford in 1857 when he said:
Everywhere ,here is connection, everywhere there is iIlustraran. No
single evenr, no single literature is adequately compre hended excepr
in reladon to other evems, ro other lireratures. 1

Ir could almost be argued thar anyone who has an imerest in

books embarks on rhe road rowards whac might be rermed COrnparative literature: reading Chaucer, we come across Boccaecio; we
can trace Shakespeare's souree materials chrough Latin, Freneh,
Spanish and Iralian; we can srudy the ways in which Romam:icism
developed aeross Europe at a similar moment in time, follow the
process rhrough whieh Baudelaire's fascinarion with Edgar AlIan
Poe enriehed his own writing, consider now many Eng!ish noveiists

1earned from the great nineteenth.centuryRussianwriters (in rra'ns.d'

1arron, of cOut'se), compare how James ]oyce borrowed fromand
10aned ro 1ralo Svevo. When we read Clarice Lispector we are
reminded of lean Rhys, who in turn recal1s 'Djuna Barnes and Ana1's
Nin. There is no limir to the lisr of examples we cO.ll1d devise. Once ~. .
we begin to read we moveacrossfrontie-rs,;mflk{g',~~<?~~f.;~ions.JAd _,:~.~ ,
connections,nO'longer readingwirhin a singklite:ratule'butwithin ,';
thegrear open space of literature with acapitall, what Goethe '~'.
rermed,,'fX'Jf{tlitf:zatur. Goethe notd that he liked ro 'ke.~pinfo~med
boutforeign~prouuctioris"aridil.dvisedarryoI1e'21set()do the'same.
'It is becoming more arrd more obviousto me,' he remarked, 'that
poerry is the common pro"perty of a11 man.kind.'2
.
Atthis juncture, one could be forgiven forassuming thfitcom.
parative literature 1S norhing more than common sense, <tn inev-ica'ble
sragein reading, made increasingly easier byinternationa-l market.
ing of books and by the availabilityof translations. But if we
shifr perspective sllghtlyand look again'arthe retm'Comparative
Literarure', whar we find instead is a history of violent debate that
goes righr back ro the earliestusage o'f the terrn at the beginningof
che ninereenrh Gentury and continues still roday. Critcs at che end
oE the twemieth century, in che age of post-modernisrn, sti11 wrestle
with the same questions that were posed morerhan. a century ago:
What is (he object of study in comparative licerature? Howcan
comparson ,be ,the objecr of' anything ?'IFindivrdal' ltetatures have a canon, what might a comparative canon be?How do.es.the
comparatist select whar ro compare? Is comparacive literarure a
discipline? Or is it simp1-y a field of srudy? These and.agreat many
other questions refuse to-go away, and since the-1950s wehave'been
hearing all roo frequently abour what Ren Wellek defined as 'the
crisis of Comparative Literature'.J
.Com parari vel irerarureasa terro seemno'arousestrong:passions,
both for and againsr. Asearly as 1903, Benedetto Croce argued
that compararive literature was a non-subject, contempruously
dismissing: eh e,s llggesti o ntha r it ,might ,be 'seen,as'a ',:sepaFa te" ~.
discipline. He discussed the def1nitionof comparative literature as
rhe exploration of 'the vcssrudes, 'alterations,developments and
reciprocal differences' of themes and liter-ary ideas across literatures,
and concluded that 'rhere is no study more ard than researches of
rhis son'. This kind of work, Croce maintaineq, is to bec;hssf1ed 'in
'che category ohruditioo' p urely.and'simply' :4;:Irtsread"dr;sbrriethirrg

.'1

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called comparative literature, he suggested rhat the proper object of

srudy should be literary history:
the comparative history of lirerature is history understood in its
ttue sense as .2. c01l!plete exp!anacion ,of che literai'y work, en
.compassed nall itsr$!latiqllsb,ips, di$posed in the <;omposite ,whole
of universal literary hist-ory (where dse could ir ever .be 'placed?),
seen in hose connections andpreparacions chat 'are ic-sraison
d~etre.s

Croce's argument wasthat theterm 'comparativeliterature'-was

-6bfuscatory, disguising theobvious,that is,the faet thar.the true
objectf study was~literaEY histiJry. Considering the pronounce
ments on comparative literature madeby scholars such as lv1ax
Koch, founder and editor f the two German comparave j-ournals
,,:Zeitsehrift fr,u.ergleichende. Lireratur (.1887-1910) and Studien
zurvergleichenden Literaturgeschichte( 1901-9 ),Croce claimed
he could nor distinguish between literary historypure and simple
and comparacive literary history. The term, 'comparative literarUJe'
he maintained, had no substance ro it.
But otherscholars made grandiose claims .for comparative litera
ture. Charles Mills Gayley, one f che founders of North Ameriqan
comparative.iiterature,,;cprQ<;!aimed inrhe same year asCroce's
-attack thar the workin-gpremise of che student of comparative
literarure was:
dicerarure as a gistinct.and integral medium ofchoughc, a common
instirutibnal expression of"humanity; differentiated, to be sure, by
'che social conditions o -che individual, by racial, historical, cul
',rural and linguistic influenaes, 'oppornmities, and .restrictions, but,
rrespective ofage or.guise,.prompced by the CO{Ilmon needs and
aspiracions of man, sprungl~om common faculties, psy'chologkal
and, physioLogical,anddb~y;i,qgcommonlaws of mailerial and
mode, of rhemdividuaJ and'socil~h-umanity.6

Remarkably similar sentitnenrs to those expressed -in 1974 b

Jost, when he claimed that'national literarure' canoo
constirute an intelligible-field of srudy beca use of its 'arbirraril
limited perspective', and thatc--omparative literature:
Fr.an~ois

1
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:::m::::;:;:~

Introduction
represents more than an aeademic discipline. Ir is an overall view oE
literature, of the world of leners, a humanistie ecology, a literary
Weltanschauung, a vision of the cultural universe, inclusive and
comprehensive7

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~

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i'i

.""

Such c1aims go far beyond the methodological and shed sorne light
on quite why the debate on comparative literature should have been
so bitter. For Jost, like Gayley and others before him, are proposing
comparative literature as sorne kind of world rcligion. The underlying suggestion is thar all culmral differences disappear when
readers take up great works; an is seen as an instrumentof universal
harmony and the comparatist is one who facilitates the spread oi
that harmony. Moreover, the comparatist-musfpOssess speClal
skills; Wellek and Warren in their Theory of Literature, a book that
was enormously significant in comparative literature when ir first
appeared in 1949, suggest rhat:
Comparative Lrerature ... will make high demands on the
linguistic proficiencies of our seholars. Ir asks for a widening of
perspectives, a suppression oE local and provincial sentments , nor
easy te achieve. 8

,
\,

The comparatist is here depicted as smeone with a vocation, as

a kind of international ambassador working in the comparative
literatures of united natons. Por Wellek and \Xlarren go on to srate
that 'Literature is one; as arE and humanity are one'. It is an idealistic
vsion rhat reCUrs in the arrermarh of major internationaJ crises;
Goethe could confidenrly (and quite wrongly)assert in 1827 thar
'narional literature means little now',and Wellek and Warren
offered the cultural equivalent oE the movement towards a United
Narions Assembly thatwas sopowerfully feh in rhe aftermath of the
Second World War.
The high ideals of such a vision oi comparative literature have
not been meto A decade arrer Theory of Literature appeared, Wellek
was already talking abour the crisis in comparative literature and
even as the subject appeared to be gaining graund in the 1960s and
early 1970s, flaws in theidea of universal values and oE literature as
one could aIread y be seen. The great waves of critical thought thar
swept rhrough one after rhe other fram srructuralism rhrough to
post-structuralism, from feminism to deconstruction, from semiology

ro psychoanalysis - shirred attention away from the activity o

comparing texts and tracking patterns of influence bernreen writer
towards the role oE the reader. And '?-s each new wave broke ove
the preceding one, notions of smgle, harmotous readings wer
shattered forever.
In rhe 1950s and early 1960s, high-flying graduare students in th
West turned ro comparative !iterarme as a radical subject, becaus
at thar rime it appeared to be transgressive, moving as ir daimed r
do across the boundaries of single literarure srudy. That there wa
nO coherenr methodology did nor matrer, nor did it matter thar th
debates on whether rhe subject existed or nor stiH continue
unabated from the previous cenrury. 'We spend far too much of ou
energy ralking ... about Compararive Literature and nor enough o
it comparing the literature,' complamed Harry Levin m 1969
urging more practical work and less agonizing about the theory.
But Levin 's proposal was already out of dare; by the late 1970s
new generaron of high-flying graduare students in the Wesr ha
turned ro Literary Theory, Women's Studies, Semiotics, Film an
Media Studies and Cultural Studles as rhe radical subject choice
abandoning Comparative Literature ro what were increasingJy see
as ainosa urs from a 1i bera] - h umanist prehistory.
Yet even as that process was underway in the West, compara ti v
literature began ro gain ground in the rest of the world. New
programmes in comparative literature began ro emerge in Chma, i
Taiwan, in Japan and orher Asian countries, based, however, no
on any ideal of universalism but on the ver)' aspect of litera!')' stud
that many western comparatists had sought to den)': the specifiCl
of nationalliteratures. As Swapan Majumdar futs it:
ir is beca use of this predilection fer Narional Literature - much
deplored by the Anglo-American critics as a methodology - thar
Comparative Literarure has struck roots in the Third World nations
and in India in panicular. 10

Ganesh Devy goes further, and suggests that comparativ

literature in lndia is directly linked to rhe rise of modern lndia
nationalism, noting that comparative !iterature has been 'used r
assert the national cultural identity'.11 There is no sense he re o
nationalliterature and comparative literature being incompatible

,'1"

The work oE lndian comparatists is characterized by a shift oE

perspective. For decades, comparative literature started with Western literature and looked outwards; now whacis happening is thar
. the West is beingscrurinized from without. Majumdar points out
that what Indian scholars callwestern literature, regardless oE
geographical ptecision, inchld~s thqseliteratures whieh derive from .
/Graeeo~'Roman .matticesvia'Chrisrianity, ana'he'terms Engllsh;
French,German, etc. as 'sub-nacional "Iireratures'. It is quite cIear
that whar he is bringing to compa.r'ative iiterature, in the rerms in
,vhichhe usesit, is'aradicallni.lternative cperspectiv'e a:~d aievaluaton oE the diseourse oE <nadonal' lterature. Aceustomed as those
of us in the West are ro rhinking in rerms of ',great' literatures, of
'majority' versus 'minority' literamres, the Indianperspective as
articulated by Majumdar is a startling one. Horn:i Bhabhasums-up
che new emphasis in an essay discussing che ambivalenceof postcolonial culture, suggesting that:
Instead of c[0ss-referencing there is an effettive,produerive crosscurring across sites of social significance, thar erases the dialectical,
disciplinary sense of 'Culrural' reference andrelevance.12

........

fi"

Developments in comparative literatur$! beyond Europe and

North America do indeed cut rhrough and "aeross all kinds of
assumptions aboutliteramre thar/have come incteasingly tobeseen
as Eurocentrie. Wole Soyinka and a whole rangeof African critics
have exposed the pervasive influence of Hegel, whoargued thar
African culture was 'weak' in contrast to what he claimed were
higher, moredeveloped cultures,and who effecrively dened Africa
a history. James Snead, in an essay attackngHegel, peints out that:
'The outstanding facr, oHate, twentie:th~century,Europeanculture' is
es ongoing reconciliarion with black culrure. The mystery may be
char ir'wok so long to discern che elernenrs:of glaq.k culture already
chere in latent;form.;'and;to,real:izeAhat;'rhesp'~iiiofl,be1iWeen',the
cultures was perhaps allalongnotone of nature, bur one oi forceY

.,
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What wehave today, then, is a very v:aried picture dE comparative

literary studies that changes accarding ta where it istakingplace.
Afrioan, Indian, Caribbean critics have challelJ.ged the refu~alof a
greatdeal ofWestemlire:ntryi'criddsrnto;ICceptt,he;fmplicationsf '

rheir lirerary.and.culrural., paliey. Terry Eagleton has argued th

'literature, in the meaning of 'Che word we have inherited, is a
ideology,'14 and he discussess Jhe way in whih the emergence
English as an aca~emic subject in the'nineteenth,century had qui
c1earpolitical imp1i.ear:ions. The establishment oLrhe-subject in t
universitie~,-he maintains,followed.thevast social changesbroug
about;in:'the;tlJrerm':thcifc~hefust World War:

The;Great'<War>"wich ts:ea:rnge.ofruling class rhetOJ:ic, put paidto

sorne of the more stridenf10rms of chauvinism on which English
-' .-.. ,had.previouslyth,ived ... English Literature rode to power on the
back of wartime nationalisrn; hut it- also representeda s.earGh.for
~piritUal solutiqnson the pan of the English ruling dass whose
sense ofidentity had been proioundly shaken ... Literatre would
be at'Qnce'solac'e and reaffirmation,a familiar 'ground on which
. Englishrnen could rgroup both to explore, andto findsome
al terntive't'O,the'ulghtrnare: of'histor:}'. 15

Eagleton's explanation of the rise of 'Englishties in with -c

aspirarions o'f many ofthe early comparatists for a subj~ct th
would transeend culturalboundat'es and unite the human Ta
throughthe civilizingpower o great licerature. Bllt just as.Engli
. . has.itself"em:ered.a_.qrisis,~wha~~;after,all, is Englishtoday? .Literatu
produced wirhin i:he geogr.aphicil boundaries of England? Of t
UnitedKlngdom? -Or literarures-written in::English fl'Offi all parts
the wodd? And wheredoes thebaundary line'between 'l.iteratu
on the-Ofie hand and 'po.pular' or 'mass' culture on the other'ha
lie? The-old days when English manttexts fromB.eowu-lfto Virgn
Waolf ~re long gone, and thequestion'of what to indude a
. 1~:x:dude.f~b:n.n,English,,~xl~~l:lUs is l. yery vexed one); so also h
Comparative'Lteratuteb'een cHed inro question by theemergen
ofalternative schools<ofrhoughr. 1'he workfJ::dwar,d Said, piene
of thenQtion,qf ',Pt'ienqdisx;n~,has provided many~ritics with a ne
vad. btilary.Said' s rhesis,ilia t

rhe Orient was a -word .wl1ich later -acc;rued to ir a wide.field of

tnean:ipgs, associatibns and connotations, .and mar these.didnot
necessarily refer to the realOrienr but to the neldsurrounding
rhe,wotdt6

'
~i

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...,.

'

provides the oasis for essays such as Zhang Long..'\[i's 'The Myrh of
the Other: China in me Eyes oE me Wesr' ~ in which ir is argued thar
'for the Wesr, China as a land in the Far East becomes traditionally
the image oE the ultimate Orher' Y The challenge posed by nonEuropean critics to the colonizing nations' systematic process of
'inventing' orher cultures has put ideology firmly back on the agenda
ofliterary studies.
A European or Nonh American literature syllabus could, umil
faidy recendy,.concern itself primarily with an established canon of
great writers. Bur a sylIabus devised in a non-European culture,
particularly in one which underwent a period of colonization by a
Wesrern power, has ro rackle completely different ssues. Hence the
vexed question of Shakespeare in India, for example, a cano ni cal
writer hailed in the nineteemh century as the epitome of English
greatness. lndian studems have the problem rherefore of dealing
wim Shakespeare nor only as a great figure in European literature,
but also as a representative of colonial values: two Shakespeares, in
effect, and in conflict with one anorher. One way of tackling this
problem is ro treat Shakespeare comparatively, to srudl' the advent
of Shakespeare in lndian culturallife and to compare his work with
thar of lodilln writers .
The growth of national consciousness and awareness of the need
to move bel'ond the coloillal legacy has led significamly ro the
! development of comparative literature in many parts of the world,
even as thesubjecremers a periodofcrisis and decay in the West. The
, way in which comparative literature is used, in places such as China,
Brazil, India or many African nations, is constructive in thar ir is
employed toexplore both indigenous traditions and imported (01'
imposed) traditions, throwing open the whole;'$~S;~::Rroblem oi the" .
canon. There is no sense of crisis in this form of comparative
literature, no quibbling abour the terms froro which ro start comparing, beca use those terms are aIready laid down. What is being
studied is the way in which national culture has been affected by
importation, and rhe focus is that national culture. Ganesh Devy's
argument that compararive literarme in India coincides with the
rise of modern lndian nationalism is important, because it serves
. to remind us of the origins of rhe terrn 'Comparative Literature' in
Europe, a term thar first appeared in an age of national struggles,
when new boundaries were being erected and the whole quesrion
of national culture and national identity was under discussion

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throughout Europe and the expanding United States of America.

In chaprer 2 we shall be looking more c10sely at the process of
developmem of both the term and the subject.
Ir is possibJe ro argue thar as we come ro the end of the twemieth
centurv, we ha ve entered a new phase in the troubled histor)' of
comp~rative literature. That the subject is in crisls in the West is
in no doubt, though ir is interesting to speculare on what will
happen as the former Eastern European states revise their syllabuses,
for they are living through a phase of nationalism that has long
since disappeared in the capitalst Western states. Falling srudem
numbers, the uneasiness of many comparatists that is revealed in
defensive papers or a reluctance to engage in definiton of what
exactly their subject consisrs of, the apparent continuarion of the
oJd idea of comparative literaturea~ binarystudy, i.e., as the study
of two authors or texts~rrom"tWo'aI{ferents'ystems (though the
-pro51em-fhow 'tC;~d~fiedlfferetsYst~~; is"~' om plexoneand
...
... ' .,., ........., .. " .. "..".',,".' ..
unreso ved), all these facrors reinforce the picture of a subject that
'ha'tTos"ti'l:S"'way, even as courses in Jiterary theory and post-coloillal
theory proliferate and publishers' catalogues list books in rhese
areas under separa te headings. But equally, ir is aJso apparem thar
the subject is expanding and developing in many pans or rhe world
where ir is expJicitly linked ro questions of national culture and
idemity. Compararive literature as it is being developed outside
Europe and the United States is breaking new ground and there is a
great deal to be learned from foITowing this development.
Whilsr comparative literature in the Third World and the Far Eas
changes the agenda for the subject, the crisis in the West continues
The new comparative literature is calling into guestion the canon
. of greatEuropean masters, and this process coincides with othe
challenges - that of feminist triticism, which has questioned th
male orientation of cultural history; and that of post-modernis
rheory, which revalues the role of the reader and, through the work
of writers such as Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu, has expose
the part played by the subterranean forces of institutionalized powe
structures, masquerading as centres of universalliberalism.
Significantly, however, Western readers are approaching thes
challenges without reCQurse to something called 'Comparatlv
Literature'. The rush of books on post-colonial !iterarure at rh
start of the 1990s reflec:rs a new interest in this hitherto neglecte
are a of study. The opening statements oI The Empire Wntes Bac
.~.~.~,

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(subtitled: Theory andPractice n Post-Colonial Literarures) inelude rhe following phrases: 'the rerm "post-colonial" ... ismost
appropriate as thecerm far the new cross-cultural criticism which
has merged in recent years and for-the diseourse through -which
rhis is consrituted.'l1lWhat is this butcomparatiyeliterarul'e under
another name?
Another 'J.'apidly,expanding, development in"lkerarysrudies,tld
one whiehhas profound implieations far the future ofcamparative
literature, is 'transIaton srudies'. Since the ear!y -usage of this term
inthe';mid~'19qOs,the'sub}ect 'has,tieveloped-'to "'sucrr'211"'eXtent
(through publishing, conferences, the establishment of. Chairs in
universities, :research programmes, etc.)that rbere aremany now
who consider it robe a discipline in ies own righr. What-dlstinguishes
translatan studies fram translarian as'traditionaliyrhought of,is its
derivaton from rhe polysystems theory developed by ltamar EyanZohar and later by Gideon Toury inTel Aviv. 19 Translaton studies
wiH bediscussedm rnoredetaillarer' inrh1S book;'but essentiallythe
key ro its rapid expansion and suecessful entry into literary studies
lies in its emphasis an lirerature as a differentiated and dynamic
'conglomerare of systems', characterized by,internal oppositions
and dynamic:.shifrs. This norion of literature asa polysystemsees
individuaIliterary syscems as pan oE a mult~faceted whole, thereby
changing rhe terms of rhe debates a'bout 'majority' and :minority'
cultures,' a bOll t:grea t' literaturesand ,'margin<ll',: litera tures:Moreover, rransIaron studies derives from work in Iinguistics,literafo/
study, history, anthropology, psychology,sociolagy ancl ethnblogy
among others, and posits the rad.cal proposition rhar transIatiol1cis
not a marginal activitybut has been and continues to be a major
shaping force for change in the historyof culture. Comparative
literature hastradirionally claimed translation as a sub-category,
buuhis,assumption, is: now being quesrioned ..Jheworkofscholars
such as Toury, Lefeyere,Hermans, Lambert and rnaqyorher-s has
shown rhar transIaron 'is especial1y significanr ,ar mpmenrs of
gres t ,cultur>ulchange. Ev:an 7Z0 har argues; ha t,extensi v:e;tr,anslarian actvity takes place when a culture 1S in a periad of rransition: when ir is expanding, when ir needs'renewal, ""hentt is in a
pre-revolurionary phase, chen rranslation 'pla,ys a vital, parto In
contrasr, when a culture is solidly esrabIished, when ir is in an
imperialisr: stage, when it believes itself robe dominant, ,then
transl.arion isless important. .Thisview,:explains 'why, ,in simple

f:

cerros, the emergenr European narions in rhe early nineteenth

cenrury, those engaged in srruggles against the Austro-Hungarian o
Otroman Empires, translared so ,enrhusiastically, andwhy transIa
doninto English began ro dee'rease as the British Empire extended
its grasp ever furrher. Late,r, as English became the language o
.international diplomacy in ,the twentieth century (lmd also the
dominant world commercal language), t-here was littleneed to
translate, hence rhe relative peverry oi rwenreth-century transb
tons inco English. compare.d with. the proliferarionof translations
in many orber 'languages.When rransIarion is neither required
nor wanted,ittendsto become a low statusactivity, poorly paid
and disregardel, and the implica:ions of rhis process haye come
increasing!y to bestudied by people working in che field ofrransla
.!1onstudies, wliich effectivelyoffers a new wa'f of leoking at cul-rura
history, taking into accounr both rhe implications or soc1o::.hjstorica
changes thar affect literaryproduction in diHerent cultures and the
linguistic strucruring of a text as ir istransported a.cross language
boundaries. It may well be, as is suggesred in chaprer 7 be1ow., tha
we need ro reassess 'rhe rcile oftranslation srudies vis-a -vis compara
tive literature, forwhilsrcomparative literature inrhe \Vest seems ro
be losing ground, even as ir beco mes more nebufous and 'loosely
definea,' so rr-anslation stutlies is undergoing the opposite process
Just as ir became neeessary fer linguistics to,rethink i~s relationship
withSemiotics; sothetlne is approathing for compararive literature
to rethink.its re1:;tioflsnip w.ithT ransIaton Studies. Semiotics was a
first regarded as a sub"category of linguistics, antlonly later did ,i
beco me ciear ,that the <reverse wasthe case, and linguistics was in
effect a bram:h of t:he wider discipline, semiorks. Comparative
literarure has alwaysdaimed translation as a sub-category,bu
as t-ranslation studiesestablishes itselE firmly as a subject based in
inter-cuitur.al study andoffering a methodology of sorne rigour
boch in rerms of theoretical and descriptive work, se comparativ
literature appears less like a discipline and morelike a branch oE
somerhing'e1se. Seen-in thi..s way, -the.problem of the crisis couId rnen
be put inro p.erspective, and che long" unresolved debate,on wherhe
'coII1paranve literature is oris not a discipline in its own rignt couId
"firtally and dfinite1ybe. shdved.

effect o this perpetual exchange upon the individual nationalities:

how, for example, the long-isolated nonhern spirit finally allowed
irself to be penetrated by the spirit of the south; what the magnetic
attraction was of France for England and England for Franee; how
each division of Europe has at one time dominated its sister sta tes
and at another time subrnitted to rhem; what has been the influence
of theological Germany, anisric Iraiy, energetic France, Catho[c
Spain, Protestam EngIand; how the warm shades of the south have
become mi..xed with !he profound analysis of Shakespeare; how rhe
Roman and ltalian spirit ha ve embellished and adorned the
Catholic faith of Milton; and finally, the attraction, the sympathies,
the constam vibraton of al! these living, loving, exalted, melaneholy and refleeted thoughts- sorne spontaneously and others
because of study - al! submtting ro influnces which they accept
like gifts and all in turn emittmg new unforeseeable influences in
the fururetl

1
How Comparative Literature Carne
into Being
!

First Appearance of the Term

'"

/'

There is general agreement that comparative literature acquired

irs name from a series of French anrhologies used for rhe teaching
of literature, published in 1816 and enrirled Cours de littrature
compare. In an essay discussing rhe origins of the term, Ren
Wellek notes thar this ride was 'unused and unexplained' but
he also shows how the termseems ro have crept into use through
the 1820s and 18305 in France. He suggesrs thar the German version
of the term, 'vergIeichende Literaturgeschichte', fir~t appeared in a
book by Moriz Carriere in 1854, while the earliesr English usage is
attributed to Matthew Arnold, who referred ro 'compararive literatures' in the plural in a letter of 1848.2
Regardlessof whether named individuals can be credited with
having inrroduced the rerm into their own languages, iris clear thar
sorne concept o 'comparative literature' which .involved a considerarion of more than one literature was in circularion in Europe
in the early years oE the nineteenrh century. The term seems ro have
derived from a methodologicalprocess applicabIe to rhe scences, in
which comparing (or conrrasting) served as a means o confirming
a hypothesis.
In hisinaugural1ecture attheAthnein 1835, entitled Littrature
trangre compare (Foreign Literature Compared), Philarte ChasJes
endeavouredto denne theobject of study in the following terms:
Ler us calculare the influence of thoughr upon thoughr, the manner
in which the people are mutually changed, what each of them has
given, and what ea eh of them has receved; ler us calculare al50 rhe

A key word in that text is 'influence', and indeed the study

influences has aJways occupied an irnpartant place in Compar
tive Literarure. ChasJes a1so refers to the 'spirit' of a nation or o
people, and suggests that it is possibJe to trace how that spirit m
have influenc:ed another writer in another culture. He pallltS
idealstic picture of internationalllterary harmon)', suggestmg th
stereorypes ma)' have sorne basis in hisrorical realiry but insisting
the rnutualiry of influences and connections.

Culture and Nationalism

But Chasles' idealistc picture of internatonal cooperaron,

influences being brought, like gifts frorn one culture to another,
anly half the story. There was another, complerely differem nari
of cultural exchange. Byron was aware of this alternative perspe
rive as early as 1819, when in the Preface to his Prophecy of Dan
he commenred that:

The ltalians with pardonable nationality, are panicularly jealous of

all that is left them as a nation - their !iterature, and in the present
bitterness of the classie rornantic war, are but ill-disposed to permit
a foreigner even to approve or imitate them, without finding sorne
fault with his ultramomane presurnption. 4

Whar Byron couid see, of course, was thedoserelationship between national identity and cultural inheritance,and he was
shrewd enough to recognize rhar a nation( or series of srnall states,
as Italy then was) engaged in struggles for independence }ealousLy
guarded its literar)" heritage against all corners. Thenne line-between influence perceived as borrow~ng and influence;perceived as
apPl'oprirttlon-ortheftwas very muh a m:Htero'E'perspectlve.
In an essay discussingthe role played by translated literature in
che Czech literary- revival of the first halE of the nineteenth century,
V!adimr Macuta-Stresses'the politicsoftranSlation,_-snce'trartsladon has always-played such a key role in patterns ofinfluen~e.5-He
cites Josef Jungmann, revolutionary scholar and patriot, who daimed
in 1846 thar 'in the language is Our nationality'. Jungrnann saw
transIaton as a -significant part o'f tne development of the mew Czech
literarure, and argued thar the point of origin of aren was less
importanr than whar happened ro rhat textinthe process oE
cransl-ation.-In ]ungmannls viSTan, 'transkItion- rntb':Czehwas;a
process o enhancemenr, a means of extendi-ng the range oE the
language and of the emergem lirerature. Clearly for 11 cultut;e
searching for its roors or for a culture struggling-for its independence
from forelgn occuparion, che question of influences was a heavilycharged one and by no means innocent.
In general rerms, ir is possible ro see the-late eighteenth and early
",nineteenth"centuriesasa tlmeor mrnense,iliterary'turmo-throughout Europe, asissues oE nationality increasingly-appeared liriRed to
cultural developmems. Nations engaged in a struggle for independence were also el1gaged JO a srrug-glefor cultural1:oot~, for a national
culrure and for a ,past_ The need to establish antecedents~-becarne
viral; emergent nations had to establish a tradition and a canon, and
probably the most extraordinary example of the searchfor roots-is
'1:he.case-of the,- feH:gt:d mediawll,:man uscripts'discovered \-byNacla v
Hanka. In 1817-18, Hanka and" his col1eagues announced their
discovery of unique manuscripts in Old Czech from rhe ninth, teneh
andthirteenth .cenruries, e:videl1ce thar pcoved -aondusivdy char
there had been agolden age of C;z;ech poetry ata time when the rest
Qf Europe was still srrugg1ing with the deca-yed epic formo Later, it
was revealed rhar rhe-manuscriprs were fraud_ulenr, but by then suh
a powerfulimpulse had beengiven to Czech literature that ,this
exposure barely mattered. AIrer centunes of repression, Czech had
been seenro be'a maiorEuropeanlanguage, with:acpresent;attd"a

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past. Between 1822 and 1827 three volurnes of SIavonic Nadonal

Songs were published, the first part of Frantisek Paiacky's five
volumeHistory of Bohemia appeared in 1836, and in the same year
(arel Macha, thegreatest -poet of the CzechRomantic revival,
published his major poem, May.
Tbe.case ofthdorged medieval manusc-ripts that soassisted the
Cz2h~National re-vivaHs'-ptobabl Yche most e:ltt1'eme ex~mple of the
desperate desire ro establish cultural roots as part--of an ongoing
,Cl.Hmral-and policicalsrruggle. Bur the.tendencyto .look bak toa
glodous'hidden pastwas-shared by peoples throughouf Europe. The
period-from the mid-eighteenth century onwards saw an intense
interest in the publication oHolk songs, and 'poetry ,and fairy tales.
Percy'sReliques of Andent English Poetry appeared in 1765,
Johannes Ewald, rhe:great Danish poet, published a 'significant
coUection based on ancient sagas and medieval ballads in 1771,
Herdds StimmenderVolker in Lieder carne out in 1778, Jakob
'atrd:WlhlrnGrnm"s 'Fai1"'j Tales -appeared in 1812-13 and
Eiias Lonnrot's versionof the finnish national epic, the Kalevala,
appeared in 1849. This -fascinarion with thepast, matched by
develop-ments in literaryhistory, philology, archaeology and
poltical historywa:s liriked .ro the general European 'queStlbn of
definitions of natiohhood. ROl:1sseau talked a;bout the colfecrive
person:alityof 'the peopie', and as Timothy Brennam points;ut:
In Germany, Herder -rransfm:med Rousseau's :,peo.ple' into the
.Volk. The significance of :chis latter concept is its shifr from
Rousseau'sErilighten-ment emphasis on civic virtue 10 awoollier
___ Romantic insistence on
primordial' and ineluctaole roots of
nationhood as a distmgutShing feature from -orber communiciesEach people was -now set off by che 'natural' characterstics of
6
,,'language,.and"rbe.incangible,"qua!iry,of a,spedfic Voiksgeist.

me

The idea of aculu.ural'heritage thatsprang from.'the people, from the

,"~genuine', 'authentic', voicesof:che coll.ecrive upen which thenation
was based, was a.ve:yp0werful one in Ehe age of revolutions chat
$we.pt Europe. -Not aH _emergentnarionsinv~ntd their own ,nonexistentmedieva}literarure, but ids signmcant mata keytextwhich
caughtthe pubiic imagination righr across Europe .ahd 'was:transla ted into a huge rangeflanguages was alsoa forgery - James
'Macpherson's Fingal;which,'appeared- n 1762.

---------~.-~------

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The Impact of Ossian

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Macpherson claimed thar his poem was a rranslation of a Gaelic epic

by rhe ancient Irish bard, Ossian (Ols(n)). Fingal was such a success
rhat Macpherson went on to 'transIate' orher epics. He had already
produced, in 1760, a collection of poetry purponed to have been
collected in the Highlands of Seotland, bur his verson of Ossian
surpassed everything else he produced. Frederic Lollie described
Ossian later, in A Short History of Comparative Literature from the
Earliest Times to the Present Day (1906), as 'a northern Dante, as
great and majestie, and no less supernatural than the Dante of
Florenee, more sensitive than he and more human than the singer of
rhe !liad,'7 The poems of Ossian, forgeries thoughrhey'Vv~ere';'proved
to be sensationally popular. The subjeet marrer eombined romance,
heroism, accounts of mythicallands an.d savage lyrieism probably
derved from folk versions of the extant Ossianie poems, and
Macpherson must have had.a good knowledge ofaneient Gaelic
poetr}' in the first instance in order to be able to produce his forgeries.
Scholars have endlessly diseussed both the impact of Macpherson's
work in differenr literar)' systems, such as rhe Freneh, the Italian,
rhe Polish or the Czeeh, and speculared on reasons for the success
of tbe Ossian poems. Certainly, ir is significant that Macpherson
remains a ser text on tbe curriculum of English depanments in many
parts of the world today, ranking alongside Byron as an aurhor of
fundamental imponance in the late eighteenth and early nineteentb
centuries. In contrast, he is unknown to tbe vastmajorityof studenrs
oE Englishliterature, and in the English-speaking wodd heappears
ar bestvery.oceasionally as a footnote. This teUs usagrear deal about
the impact o tbis particular writer upon different tliterary scenes)'
and once again it is impossibleto divorce thefortunes of Macpherson
from the poltical reality of his age. DI. ]ohnsonaccused him of
forgery from the olltser, but ir is nor on account of his forgeries tbat
he is not taught in Britain, just as the fact of his forgeries has norhing
to do with bis place in the ltalian or Polish canons of English
Literature respective]y. Ratber, Macpherson's suecess (and lack of
it) can be traced to tbe role played by his rexts in the debate on
national culture and national identity that was being so hotly
discussed throughour Europe. In Britain, where Scorrish and Irish
nationalism were both feared and despised, tbere was a vested
interest in den}'ing tbe possibiliry of a great bardic past to those

cultures. In other nations seeking ro establish their identit)' ther

was a powerful drive towards rediscovering the past felt by man
scholars, writers and ordinary people and in this, combined with th
drive ,to translate the best of other nations' literature, there aIs
seems to have been an urge to satisfy a hunger for culture.

~.

The Imperial Perspective

The picture changes radically, when we rurn to consider the way m

which Europe was projecring itself on rhe rest of the world. Th
American revolurion of 1776 had ser rhe native Enghsh of th
coJonists off along a new road, and in the early nineteenrh centur
the revolutions in Latm America were to follow a similar process o
rupture with Spain. The vexed question as ro whether an author lik
Ann Bnrdstreet could be considered American (because she lived an
wrote in New England for most of her life) or English (beca use be
poems were published in England, tbere not bemg facilities availabl
in the colonies) could finally be resolved. American literarure ma
have taken English writers as models, but American wnters wer
developing separately, in terms of means of production as well a
subject marter and formo Likewise, through the nineteemh centur
we find Latin American writers endeavourng to create an epie fit fo
a new continent, still caught up in the eoils of publshing policy
censorship, stylisric constraims and a host of orber legacies from
Spain and Portugal, but nevertheless seemg revolurionary struggl
as linked to the emergenee of new literatures.
Literary developments in the New World reflected a new orde
In complete contrast is the arritude of a colonial power ro th
literature produced by peoples under its domination,and probabl
the most extreme example of tbis philistine vis ion is the (in)famou
comment by M.acaulay, who, in 1835, stated that:
1 have never found one among them (Oriemalists) who could deny
that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole
narive literature of India and Arabia. 1 have certainly never mer
with any Orientalist who venrured to maintain thar the Arabic and
Sanscrit poetry could be compared ro that of the great European
nations. 8

7'

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and the lndian subcontinent srrikes us roday as both racist and

absurd, yet the underlying assumptions cf Macaulay'sposition
were widely shared. Edward Fitzgerakl, whose translation oi rhe
Rubiyt of Ornar Khayym became one of the great dassic porns
of the nineteemh century also ha-d_a low opinon of Oriental litera.tu:re_ 'Ir isan amusement tome,' fhe -wrorero:hisc:f.r:ientltGowU'on
March 20, 1857, 'to take what liberties 1 likewith these Persians,
who, (as I think) are nor Poets ,enough to frighten one fromsuch
,ex;:ursions, and who,r{lal1yo;clo,;want:,aAUttle~, to\sha:p~thert1;'9
Be/ief in the superioriry ofeheir Own culture, was a part of the
politics of imperialismo The rhetoric which dismlssed African or
Asian peoples as 'primitive' or'chlldlike'alsodismissed their art
forms in variou.s ways. Oral culture was_generally regarded as,being
of lowerstarus, so the exisrence ata tradition of oral epics, for
example, was eonsidered insignifieant. At the same time, because Df
the importance of thewritcen'epioinrhe,European tradiEon,"those
cultures which had no epic and whichsaw the lyrie as the highest
form of poetry were alsodowngraded. Hemer and the Greeks,
the pla ys of Shakespeare, the poetry of Spenser- and Milton; these
were ~hetexrs against which other works were rneasured and
found wanting.
Once again, the crux of the problem was one of perception.
The Shakespeare that was 4aken ca. India,.was,:a writer,whowas
depicted asbeing the embodimenr of English virtueand vir:tuosity.
Shakespeare the grear master, Shakespeare the supreme English
writer, Shakespeare the eptome ofEnglishnesswas whar~ame.to be
exported. The existenceoJ an alternarivepieture,rhe revolutionary
poet whose plays abour the deposirion cf unjust rulerswere staged
aeross Europe in cites seerhingwich revo!utionary energy, was not
permissable. Andwi.th theewqtt,ation-ofthe~idea1ized.Shakespeare
carne all the evls of colonialism, whichled Jawaharla:l Nehru ca
draw an ironie contrast berween what he called 'the two Englands':
Whichof" rheser:woEnglandscame ro "rndi~?'TheEngland'of
Shakespeare and Milton, of noble speech andwriring and brave
deed, ot polirical revolution and the srruggle.for 'freedom,"'Of science
and tedmical progress, or the England oErhe savge penal code and
brutal behaviour, oE enrrenched feudalism and reaction?For 'Cher-e
were two Englands, just as inevery country mere are 'these two
aspecrs oE. nationaLc.haracter:cand,civiliz.ation. 1O

fe-

superia'riry of their own culture and a vision of.rhe world tha

involvedstrict hie-rarchies based on class, race and colour were also
engaging iu compari.son. The problem wasthat they inevica'bly
compared negatively.Some literatures were wortbless than others
sorne were unique ir!' having universal impbrtance.a,nd qthers couid
be Histegai'aedas primicive or'banaL The question.ofthe universa
value of an author or a work was fundamental to this .colenialis
viewpoint, fQ!;t:enabled claims to be made tharset works-aparr from
ll:othel"considerations, arguing rhat a, wrlter such,asShakespeare
-for example, was "on ahigherplane than almost .anyone dse. Th
hasis for c1aims -of universality tended, as-they stiHdo, to argue fo
sOV1e kind oi common transcultural shaI"ing oi emotianal experi
enee, a:nd disregarded the vicissitudes ofliterary history. So th
factrhat 'Ben ]nson.was consdered to be a -greater writer than
Shakespeareby hiscontemporaries-and by subsequent generation
fef'wellover'acentury arrer his dea~hwas ignored.By the tim
Shakespeare was being exported to India and theother eolonies i
the.mid.,nineteenth century, his compatriots regarded his universa
greatness as a marter offaer, not speeulation, and .che process o
discover-ing Shakespeare thar had goneon through the eighteenth
.cehrury -was disregarded cOV1pletely.
.Cultural colonialism was also a form of eomparative literature, i
-rhar ,writers were, impo:rtedby the colonizing group and nativ
writers were evaluateclnegatvely in comparison.Ofcoursesuc
pract,ices were :never .described as com,pafativeliterature, for com
paratists through che nineteenth'enturykeptinsisting that compari
son took,placeon a'ho.rizntal axis,that is,_between equals. On
result of-this perspective was thadrom the beginning,comparativ
literature schlarstended ro work only with European writers
The:pre:valence of thisattitude is attested "by che fact that ir ha
stiHnot disappeared in the minds (and syllahuses},of many contem
porary :OI\1paratisrs. In 1967, for example,.C. L. Wr,enngave th
PresidentiaL<\ddl'ess ofrhe Modem Hl,lmanities:Researeh Associa
tion in Chicago.( and rhen ,again in Londontwo-weeks iater) entide'
The idea of Cmpar4tive 'Ute-rature, in which-he suggested ~ha't:
Clearly fundamentaldifferenGesin 'parteros oE thinkingamong
peoples must impose-relatively,n-arrow limirs. Al1 Africanlang.uage,
,for --example, is inc::ompacihle wirh .a European orte foLjoinr ap-

proaches in Compararive Literarure study. Even Sanskrit, though

itself an Indo-European Janguage aiong with irs lndian ramificarions, presents a partern of thought which renders any son of literal
rransIaron oE very limited value. 11

He goes on to say that a comparative study of Paradise Lost and

the Ramayana, for example, can only discuss parallels and differences in subject marter and treatment at the expense of the
poetry, and suggests thar this is inevitable beca use of the different
nature of Sanskrit thought and feeling. The onJy proper object of
study for compararists, he argues, is 'European languages, medieval
or modern'.

.1
'.

The Paradox of Early Comparative Literature

'.,
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The rerro 'comparative literature' appeared in an age of transirion. In Europe, as nations struggled for independenee - from
the Otroman Empire, from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from
Franee, from Russia - and new nation sta res carne imo being,
narional identiry (wharever rhar was) was inextricably bound up
with national culture (however that was defined). Later comparatists
may have chosen to ignore rhe heared political context in whch rhe
first staternenrs about eompararive literature were made, but ir is
striking to note rhar even whilsr ideas of universalliterary roots were
being discussed, aJong with ideas a bout rhe spirit or sou] oE a narion,
comparisons were being made that involved evaluating one culture
higher than another. 'France is the most sensitiveof allcountries ...
what Europe is to the world, F!ance is ro Europe./.saidPhilarere
Chasles in his 1835 speech to the Athne,addingalso that he had
'complete contempt fornarrow-mindedandblind patriorism',u
This double vision enabled hini tomake daims for the unbiased
narure of comparative literature, whilst simultaneousJy proclaiming
French superiority.
Lord Macaulay's attitude when he consigned Indian and Arabian
literatures to the scrapheap was not unlike Chasles', for he too had
an absolute be1ief in the superioriry of his own culture. Both were
products of the Europe oftheir time, recognizing the inter-relatedness
of European literary systems and what Chasles termed 'the part of
other nations in the grand civilizing movernent', bur perceiving that

which carne from outside Europe as alieno Even Goethe's remarks

about 'world literature' need to be seen in context, for aIthough he
eventually turned his attention to the literatures of continents
beyond Europe, his coinage of the term 'Weltiiteratur' related to his
views on Europe and in particular ro his desire for an end to war.
What becomes apparent when we ook at the origins of comparative literature is that the term predated the subject. People used
the phrase 'comparative literature' without having clear ideas abour
what it was. With the advantages of retrospection, we can see tha
'comparative' was ser against 'national', and that whilst rhe srudy o
'national' literatures risked accusations of partisanship, the study
of 'comparative' literarure carried with it a sense of transcendence
- 01 the,narr-owry n~~:malistic; lnother word~, the rerm was used
loosely but was associated with the desire forlpeace in Europe and
far harmony between nations. Central to this eahsm was also rhe
belief thar comparison couId be undertaken on a mutual basis. So
Chasles in 1835 and Abel Franc;ois Villemain in 1829 hailed the
value of srudying parterns of mfluence, Iistmg rhe names of grea
writers from a vanety of different countries. Comparatlve literary
srucly, according to Chasles, was to be before anyrhing else, a
'pleasure trip', involving a look at great figures from the sixteenth
century onwards. Communication, cominglmg, shanng were key
words in this view of comparative literature, which depolincized
wriring and aspired rowards universal concord. Comparative litera
ture seems ro have emerged as an antidote to nationalism, even
though its rooes went deep ntO national cultures. Chasles and
Villemain could discuss the greatness of past writers wlrh urbaniry
and scholarly distinction, but they were primariIy Frenehmen and
tneir interest focused on the 'gift-giving' process of literary in
fluences between france and its neighbours. Likewise, the enormou
interest throughout Europe in the early ninereenth century for Byron
and Shakespeare, as evidenced by the proliferation of transIa tions o
rheir works, was nor so mueh due to an interesr in England and
English culture, but rather due ro rhe use thar could be made o
twO writers who could be read as prototypical revolutionanes
The idea that there was mutualiry in comparison was a myth, yet i
was a myth as profoundly believed as the rnyth of universal
transeultural greatness.
Given the ambiguities surrounding rhe origins of the term, ir i
hardly surprising that comparatve iterarure scholars from th

"'ti,

... ..:...,.,

~"'~-

~~

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j"

mld-nineteenrh century onwards should ha ve been almost obsessively concerned with defining their subject. Ulrieh Weisstein says
that eirher Jean-Jacques Ampere, author of Histoire de la littrature
franr;aiseau moyen age compare:aux littratures trangeres (1841)
or AbelFran<;ois Villemain, author oE Tableau de 'la littrature au
moyen age en France, en Italie, en Espagne -et-en Angleterre(2
vols, 1830) 'mustbe.regardedas rhe trueJatheroJasysten.atically
eonceived Comparative Literature.in France - or anywhere, forthat
matter'.13 Coneeiving sysr:ematieallysomeihing that ~ad comeinto
. beingso, looselY'wasnoeasyc matter .WhatVillemain ande Am pere
did was to write what could be describedas histories of literatures,
showing patterns of eonneetion and irifluence.lt was, not un!ll
lacer in the eentury that Chairs oE Compararive literature were
esrablished, andthe 'subjeet acquired .academic status. The flFst
Chair was set up in Lyonin 1897and subsequently other Cha-irs
appeared in Franee. French comparativeliterature dominated rhe
fidd"wlth other.European c0umries'ffiuch slower:in'<establishing
Chairs. In the Umted Scates, however, Charles Chauncey ShackweU
taught a course In ~general or comparativeliterature' at CorneE
from 1871 onwards, and Charles Mills Gayley taughr compararive lirerary ccicism ar che UniversltTof Michigan from 1887, while
che flrsr Chairin the subject \Vas established at Harvardin 1890.
Indeed, It is nche last two decades of rhe nineceenrh century thar
'Comparan ve' Literacure began to be esrabEshed internationaUy"for
in addition co che subject being taughe in institutions 6f higher
educaran in Europe and che Unted Staces"Hutcheson -Maaley
POSflett, Professor of Classics and ,Eng1ish Literature~t Universit-y
College, Auckland, New-~ealand, published a full-Iength srudy of
the subjet, entided Comparative Liter~turein 1886, andtwo
journals were founded in Europe. The.first, sec upin 1879by,Hugo
.Meltzl.de.,Lomnir-z,:il.,German,speakingscholar:fromCluj.in.,w.hat
is now Rumania, was a multilingualpublication, entitled Acta
comparationislittera7'um u.niversar.um. This -w.asfullowed by. two
,periodicals .edited by: ,che GermanscholrMax'iKch, Zeitschrift
frvergleichende L.iteraturgeschichte (1-887-.1910) and Studienzur
vergleichenden Literaturgesch.ich'te (1901-1909).
Throughoutthe,nineteenrh century; use of che rerm 'compararive
Licerature' wasflexble. SelE-s;y!ed comparatists followed theprinciple outlined by.Humpty Dumpty, who pointsout co Alice thar
'when;heuses.aword;!ir:meansjusr'whaflchoose,ino''ffieanneirher

:
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__ , ."._., __.._

more nor less', though they certainly did 'not foilow his secon
p-rinciple, whieh was that whenever he useda word a lot he alway
paid it e:x:tra. The .rerm 'comparative literarure' drifted into use i
.severaHanguages, meaning wbarever anyone chose itto mean.
Early-French studies, such.as che warks-by Ampereand Villemai
noted bove, focused ol). ~the MiddJe Ages, on that,'moment in -th
"deve16pment'fEutopean -cuLtural systems when linguistic bound
aries w-ere 'only looselydrawn and national 'boundaries were no
_,deflned aul1; wli'en rhere was free traffic-between scholarsand poet
'Dante/hailed<as fatherof the Italan language,did, fter aH, prais
the'Proven<;al pet Arnaut Daniel as as his master, granting him m
supremehonour of allowing him to -speak in his native language i
-Canto XXIV of Purgatorio, and thereby demonstratngthat poetr
asheeonceived it wasnot'tied to native language or culture. Th
Middle A,ges offered a rieh neld of study for compar:atists, beca us
wben they turned toa period of European histQry that was s
,eomplet"ely:diiferenr, they couldset asideche vexed questions oE :he
own day, the bitteranmosities that sooften-led to-the shedding,o
blood and which were caused by the drawing oHrontiers a-ccordin
to poltical rather than geographical orethnographical critera. Y
later French comparatisrs questioned the legtimacy of studYlng th
Middle Ages, arguing that only post-medieval literatme was th
proper.provinceof eomparative-enquiry. The influential crid~ Pau
Van Tieghem pwdaimed in 1931 ,that:

.::.:.

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Comparative -Literature compses che mutual relations between

Greek and Latn lieerature, rtIe debe of modero Jiterature (since rhe
:Middle Ages) ro ancie.r1t literature, and, finally, the link s connecting
. thevarious modern literatures. The lacter field of inveStigaron,
whih is che most extensi.ve and complex of the three, is the one
which,Gon,,parative Li~eramre, in che sense in w:hich ir is generally
nderStbOd, cakes for its province.14

Van .:r~~ghem's arguments againsuhe-s1:udy of.the Middle Age

reversed the ea'rlier view,thal the pe.riod offered a unique -oppo
tunity Eorcomparatists because of the lackof clearly defi,ne
boundaries between 'nanoQ,s. He proposed instead thar moder
literatures werebest suiced to comparative analysis, and he als
suggested that the comparison should take placebetween tw
elmentsonly.Anythingbeyond thacwas notme properprevinceo
compararive literarure. Itwas, in his'view, something elsealtogethe

What happened in r..~e century betVIreen the publicaron oE

Villemain's two voiume srudy of rhe Middle Agesin 1830 and Van
Tieghem'snarrow deflnition in 1931 continuesto affect our understanding of comparative literature today, and ir is worrh trying to
trace rhe shifts in attitude towards comp~ative literatme thar led to
Van Tieghem's bold but very limitng book, in which he ser oral
culture, folklore and pre-Renaissance literature outside the boundaries oE his comparative literarure and formulated the noron of
binary studies that has served tbe subject so i11 for so long.

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in originating 'a new conception of literature and literary history',

arguing that Herder's work on poetry and folksong 'opened up one
of the mosr fertile and extensive areas of compararive literary
history'. Koch saw transiaron as a fundamental area of comparative
enquiry, and set German literature and irs history as the 'point of
departure and the centre of the efforts which the Zeztschrift intends
to aid'. Folklore, he maintains, has become a discipline in its own
right, but nevertheless the compararive srudy of folksong and poetry
is seen as fundamental to compararive literature. J6 We can compare
this view to Van Tieghem, who had very definte views on why
folklore should be exciuded from comparative literature:

Attempts at Definition
-----iItI---------

Readers today, considering France and Germany as the twin giants

of the European Economic Community, couid be forgiven for overlooking the very different stare of affairs that prevailed in the
nineteenth century. Moving on beyond both the Revolution and the
rise and faH of Napoleon, France by the mid-nineteenth century
was a wealthy power wirh colonies throughour the world, a strong
industrial base and a belief in the superiority oi its language,
instirutions and culture. Germany, on rhe other hand, was an
assortment of lmle states, united by language but striving towards
a poltical centre ano in search of a soul. Since, as has be en suggesred
aboye, comparative liter~ture was linked to nationalism from rhe
srart, it IS hardly surprising thar as a subject ir should have developed so differently in France and Germany. The French perspective,
which appears as oriented more rowards the study of cultural
transfer, always with France as eirhergiver or receiver, was concerned with denning and tracing 'national characteristics'. As
Ferdinand Brunetiere said in 1900:
the history of Comparative Literature will sha-pen in each one of
us, French or English, or German, the understandiFlg of the most
nationa] characterstics of OUT great writers. We estabiish ourselves onl)' in opposing; we are denned only by comparing ourse!ves ro others; and we do not know ourselves when we know on])'
ourselves. IS
The German perspective, however, was somewhat different. In
the introduction to his new journal, Zeitschrift fr vergleichende
Literaturgeschichte, Max Koch praised the achievements of Herder

This (the fair)'-tale, myth, legend etc.) i5 folklore and nor literary
history; for the latter is the hisrory of the human mind viewed
through the an of writing. In rhis subdivision of rhemarology, however, one considers onl)' the subjecr matter, its passage from one
counrry tO another, and its modifications. AH plays no pan
in these anonymous tradltions wnose narure itis ro remain
impersonal. 17

Ir is perbaps nor tOO slmp\stlC tO see the keyword in thlS passage

as 'mind', and to refleet that French comparatlve !iterarure tended
more towards the study of the products of the human mind, whereas
German comparatists were more concerned with the 'roots' or
'spirit' of a naton. This difference in terminology and in empbasis
was due to the differem cultural traditions and differem poltical
and economic developmem patterns of France and Germany in
the nneteenth century.lhose differences became exacerbated in the
twentieth century, as Freneh comparatists sought to restrict the
use of the term and pn it down) while German comparatists
(or some German comparatists) became increasingly chauvinistic.
As Ulrich Weisstein puts ir, referring to the situarion in Hitler's
Germany inthe 1930s: 'How could Comparative Literature flounsh
in a country inwhich the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere and Eugene
O'Neill were banned from the stage, and where the novels o the
great French and Russian wrirers were no onger accessible?'lS The
journal esiblished in 1877 by Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz takes a
differem position, and presents a different case for Comparatlve
Literature. De Lomnitz argued in his editorial starement thar the
discipline of comparative llterature was not yet established, and rhar
the task of his journal was to assisr with the process of establishing

it. He ser out three principIe tasks: a revaluaron oElterary history,

whch he described as having been relegated to the status of 'the
handmaiden' oE political history or philology; a revaluation oE
translationas an art; and.a belief in multilingualism. He attacked the
chauvinsm oE comparative literature ,based on narfowly dn.ned
ideas of nationalism:
ir cannorbe denied thar che so-called 'woddliterature' is-generally
misunderstood. Forco.day, ever:y ..nation demam:kits own 'wodd
lirerature' withollrquiteknowing what is meartt byit.'Bynow,
every narion considers rself, for one good reascn or another,
superior ro al1 orher narions, and chis hypothesis, wo{ked outinto
a complete rheory of suffisance, is even'the basis oE so much Df
modern pedagogy which roday practically everywhere strives tobe
'national' ,19
De Lomnitz's views strikeus roday as bochenlightenedand .farreaching. He correcdy predicred. rhesignificance of translationin the
developmenr oE comparativditerature and argued convincingly for
lirerary history ro have an existence in its own right and nat as a
back-up for some ather subject. His concern f0r multHingualism
meant char he rook akeen interest in minoriry -Ianguages and
iteratures, and ane oE che Eounding principies oE his jour:aal was a
belief thauhe p>oIiticalimportanceorlack ofit ota natianshouid
nor intrude upon the comparative study oE literatures. Hence a
comparison between aSlovene and a French wrirermight be
undertaken on -its own cerms, with no 'suggesrion that the latter
might be worrh mote rhan the former simpiy on account of thestarus
oE French literarure in the Euwpean tradition.
But de Lomnitz's journal hadlittle impact on the developmentoE
.eomparative"literatureourside Easrern:Eurape.17heFrench crnode!
tended 'ro dominate,thoughsome of the Frenth work wasso
extreme that we can only look at ir with astQnishmentroday.
,Lol1ee:sSho7:t,Histor::y, ,which Weisst-edismi~sed,sobsoleR.even
when it came out in 1903,.doesneverthe1essreflect a particularway
of structuring literary history, based on a profoundlychauvinistic
viewpoint. Consider, far example, Lollie's account of -Eog:!ish
literat)lre at the close of che eighceenth century, me yearschat
sa w che publicaron of-works. thar have come ro belooked upon as
dassictexts:

l'

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In England,at rhe end oE che eighreenrhcenrury, politicalagitation

was roo rampant for the peaceful cultivation of letters amidst the
demands of war and public events. Literature, at such .times, becomes almost, if 11.0t whoUy, poltical ... imaginative literature
dedined. Hisrory and oratlryheld the first place; poetry was
negected;7et che centuty gained in practical activity what ,it lost
-in poetcidealism. 2o

Having made this statement, Lollie h'as tO compensare with .a

Jo0tIlote for the names he has 1eft out. He'therefore adds that 'it is
interesting to note thatbetween 17-89 and 1814, among a score of
'romancewriters of sorne reknown, faurteen were women,three of
whorn wonEur.opean reputation, ,namely, AnnRadcliffe, Maria
Edgeworth, andJane Austen, but especially thetwo former.'
It seems more likely, co,nsidering examples such'aSlhe'ab.ove, that
Loll-ie's work was.largely disregarded by larercomparatists because
af his ignoraoceof literary history, rather than on acc;ount ofhis
mechodoiogy. His book is a good example of the shortcomings of a
a panicular kind of cornparative litera cure, in which wooll-yidealism
combines with chauvinistic narionalism and rhe wholeis compounded by a grossly over-ambitious project (the history of all
literatures) .ane! the wrter's own (considerable) lacunae,
Paul Van Tiegnem was undoubtably reacting against compararive literature of the Lollie variery, bur. in trying to 'formulate precise boundaries far comparative litera cure hecreated a .new set of
problems. He endeavoured t solve the .problem of che term by
'setting up distinctions between 'comparative' Hterature, 'general'
literatureand 'world' literature. In-his view,comparative literature
shold invoive the sru!Ybftwo elements(tul:tes bi-naiies.), whilst
generalliterature should involve che study of sever:al literatur.es. This
distinctlon did nor, help at,all and on!y addedto the confusion, for
as Ren Wellek notes;
ir .is impossibie ro draw atine between Comparative Literature and
generalliterarure,' between, say, the 'int1uence .cf Walcer,Scott in
France ami che riseof thehist.orica:1n.ovel. Besides, che c.ertn 'general
liter.ature' lends itseif ro confusion;, ichasqeen understood to mean
literaq :rheor.y, 'poecics, fue principies :of literature. 21
Weilek also poines out tha-tco.mparative literature in,therestrict:ed
sense oEbinar-y relarions 'canoot. make a meaningEul discipline',

',i

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because it would involve dearing with fragments and couId ha ve

no rnethodology of its own. In the chapter entided 'General, Comparative, and Nationallirerature' in a book co-written with Austn
Warren (Theory ofLiterature, 1963), RenWellek returns again to
the attack, this time suggesting thar one of the resuIts of the narrow
binary approach has been a decline in interest in comparative
litera ture in recent years.
Certainly the French em phasis on binary studies of Van Tieghem,
Fernand Baldensperger and the other French scholars involved in the
creaton of the Revue de littrature comtJare in 1921 conditioned
several generations o comparatists. O~ce the problem had been
how ro determine what might not be theprovince of comparative
literature; now exclusion zones were set up accordrng to carefully
formulated crireria. Comparative lirerar)' srud)' could take place
between two languages, so a srud)' involving French and German
aurhors wouId be acceptable. What WQuId be unacceptabIe, however, would be a study berween rwo writers working in EngIish,
regardJess of whetherone was Canadian and the orher Kenyan. Nor
would a swdy of Beowulf and Paradise Lost be acceptabIe, because
although the former is in Anglo-Saxon, technically Anglo-Saxon
is an early variant of modern English, so pan of the same literary
system. Van Tieghem took pains ro son out which francophone
Belgian or Swiss writers might be included (rhe ones who tended ro
gravitate rowards. Paris), and then excluded those who preferred ro
remain in their homelands. Comparative literature should study the
impact of works by named individuals, henee it was allthor-centred,
and oral literature, anonymous literature and colleetive or folk
literature were outlawed. An enormous amoun! of timeand energy
was expendedon trying to determine what theboundary lines.
should be - when was a dialeet really a language ?When did a nation
become a naron - when it had a literature of its own,or when it
had a political frontier? When did folk-literature become 'proper'
author-based literature? These and a range o other related questions bedevilled comparatists for decades, with French scholars
reacting strongly for or againsr the restrictions and formulating sets
of alternatives. It is possible to see almost al! French comparative
Iiterature from the 19 30s onwards as coloured by the tudes binaires
principIe, by the need sorne felr to defend it and the impulse which
led scholars such as Jean-Marie Carr, Marius Fran\=ois Guyard and
Ren Etiemble to try and move beyond it.

The notian of languages as the fundamental distinction that

enabled comparison to take place was probably the most widely
accepted principIe of all, and as late as the mid-1970s when 1 was
appointed ro set up Comparative Literature at Warwick, 1 had clear
instructions at first nor to admit English-American comparative
proj,ects and to insist on all students having at leasr LWO languages
The linguistic distinction as the basis for comparative literature
folJowing the French approach, had become widespread.
The faHac)' of thar approach is plain ro see. Language and culture
are inexrricably bound together, and a view that sees linguistic
boundaries as the principIe line ro draw for establrshngthe basis o
comparatiye study is bound to fail. The binary approach never did
work; alI it succeeded in doing was to restrict the projects com
parative literature scholars were allowed ro undertake, crearmg
obstacles where none had existed previously and deliberate!y choos
ing to ignore orher, larger issues. Even someone like Ulrich Welsstein
author of one of the great classic books on comparative literarure o
our time, is caught up in the coi1s of binary srudy and the language
problem, so thar whilst he can bring himself to admit thar there
probably is a case for alJowing comparative study between English
and American literature, since both cultures have 'gone their own
ways, at Ieasr since the early nineteenth cenrury', he cannor bring
himself to admit another kind of distinction: 'Ir would be ..
questionable to separa te, for the sake of a misguided methodologica
purism, Irish from English literature; for by'such a sleight-of-hand
writers like $wift, Yeats and Shaw would be artistically uprooted to
the sake of anonliterary principle.'22
That Irish writers may have been included in the English canon in
rhe first place through non-literaryprinciples does not seem ro hav
occurred to Weisstein. HeJcould just about admit to differenc
between American and English literatures, but that was as far as h
could go. T o proceed further would be tO return to the vexed
questions oflanguage, national culture and identiry, thar ill-defined
swampland from which Comparative Literature had first emerged
in post-Waterloo France and which subsequent scholars had kep
trying ro forger.
In his essay, 'The Crisis of Comparative Lirerature', based on th
talk he gave in 1959, Ren Wellek made a strong attack on what h
saw as obsolete methodology and partisan nationalism. He warne
thar comparative lirerature had sril] not established itseH properly a

a subject on any senous basis, and thar it was continuing to wrestle

with probJems thar had long since ceased tO have any relevance. He
laid the blame on rhe French school:
Al] these flounderings are on]y possible because Van Tieghem, his
precursors and followers conceive of literary srudy in terms of nineteenth century posinvistJc facruabsm, as a study of sources and
influences ... They have accumulated an enormous mass of parallels, slmilanties and somenmes ldentlties, but they have rarely
asked what rhese relarionships are supposed to show excepr possibly the fact of one wnrer's knowledge and reading of another
writer. 23

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Ren Wellek was writing over a quarrer of a century ago, but his
essay can be read tOda)' as prophetic. When he accused Van Tieghem
and the French group of restricting the scope of comparative
llterarure, of fosrenng a blmkered approach thar led nowhere
except !ilW a series of blind alleys, each bearing rhe names of rwo
possibly obscure writers working in two differenr languages, he
pOlnred out thar such an approach could have obvious consequences. In facr, what happened was thar subsequent generatlons
of younger scholars rurned away from a subjecr rhar appeared to be
antJquate and lrrelevant, and, as has already been suggested in the
Inrroductlon, [he number of iterary theorencians has expanded
whilsr [he number of comparatists has contracted. There is no place
in the post-modermsr world for a subject rhar continues ro quibble
abom whether Yeats should be considered Irish or English and
wherher a srudy on the impact of Ibsen on modernist drama can be
properly termed 'comparative' or 'general' literature.
The rime has come, as Ren Wellek and Harry Levin were saying
long ago, to abandon rhe old, unnecessary disrinctions and ro see
them for whar they were, as the products of a particular age and a
particular cultural conrext. In rhe next chaprer, we shall consider
an alrernanve perspectlve on compararive literature, a1so nor
withour )ts failmgs, but which can at Jeast be conrrasted wirh
rhe binary approach - rhe developmenr of comparative iterarure
ourside Europe.

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