2. What Is Comparative Literature?
• Matthew Arnold used it for the first time in his letter to
his sister, May 1848.
• “How plain is now, though an attention to the
Comparative literatures for the last fifty year might have
instructed any one of it, that England is in a certain sense
far behind the continent.”
• Lane Cooper in 1920s: a ‘bogus term’, it makes ‘neither
sense or syntax’. ‘comparative potatoes’ or ‘comparative
husks’(Rene Wellek, Discriminations: Further Concepts
of Criticism, New Haven 1970, p. 1ff.) For Cooper
accurately it is, ‘The comparative study of literature’.
• French ‘litterature comparee.’
• The terms such as ‘World Literature’ and ‘Weltliteratur’
have been employed by Goethe. For ‘the best that has
been written in the world.’( cf. Fritz Strich, Goethe und
die Weltlitetratur, Berne 1946, pp. 13-27)
3. What Is Comparative Literature?
• Rene Wellek employs other terms such as ‘universal literature’ and
‘international literature’.
• “‘Comparative literature’ implies a study of literature which uses
comparison as its main instrument.” – S. S. Prawer. (S. S. Prawer,
Comparative Literary Studies: An Introduction, Duck Worth:London,
1973.p.2.
• Benedetto Croce, litteratura Comparata, Real appreciation of literature
is possible only when they are compared beyond the national
boundaries.
• ‘An examination of literary texts (including works of literary theory
and criticism) in more than one language, through an investigation of
contrast, analogy, provenance or influence; or a study of literary
relations and communications between two or more groups that speak
different languages.’ – S. S. Prawer. (S. S. Prawer, Comparative
Literary Studies: An Introduction, Duck Worth:London, 1973.p.2. p.8.
6. The Need of Comparative Lit. 1
• To appreciate Wordsworth one needs to compare his
work with that of Milton, Thomson, Keats and Shelley.
• To appreciate Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nobokov ;
whose earlier work is in one language and later in
another needs a polyglot to appreciate their works of
art.
• Rene Etiemble’s( the teacher of Leopold Senghor) plea
in his stimulating Comparision n’est pas raison of 1963:
‘…we allowed ourselves to be charmed by the music of
words instead of clinging to their substance: their
meaning. That, of course, was decisive proof of our
lack of civilisation,’
7. The Need of Comparative Lit. 2.
• To substantiate the argument of his teacher Leopold Senghor
quotes Lord Macaulay’s famous blast against supporting the study
of Arabic and Indian literature and culture as,
• ‘…I have never found one among them who could deny that a
single self of a good European library was worth the whole native
literature of India and Arabia… the superiority of the European
becomes absolutely immeasurable…’
• ‘ We must at present do our best to form a class who may be
interpreters between us and millions whom we govern; a class of
persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions,
in morals, and in intellect.’(Minute addressed by Macaulay to Lord
Bentinck, Governor General of India, on 2nd February 1835, Leopold
Sedor Senghor, Ansprachen anlasslich der Verleihung des
Friedenspreises des deutchen Buchhandels, Frankfurt, 1968, pp. 44-
8.
• Without becoming a comparatist one cannot do the justice to the
Renaissance or Pre-Renaissance literature.
8. The Distinction between
‘Comparative’ and ‘General
Literature.’• R. A. Sayce :
• ‘General Literature’ he defines ‘The study of literature
without regard to linguistic frontiers.’
• ‘Comparative Literature’ as ‘the study of national literatures
in relation to each other’. ( Yearbook of Comparative and
General Literature XV (1966). P. 63.)
• When we compare a Shakesperean sonnet with a
Petrarchan one we are in the field of comparative
literature.
• Andre Gide’s vision for ‘Europeanization of the cultures.’
(Andre Gide, Journals1889-1949, translated, collected and
edited by Justin O’Brien, Harmondsworth 1967, pp. 257-8.)
9. The Role of Comp. Lit. in Constructing
the theory of literature.
• The works of August Wilhelm Schlegel illustrated it first than that of
Matthew Arnold, Friedrich Schlegel illustrate it.
• According to Harry Levin it is an object not a subject.
• To take first step towards recognising what is in each case good,
original, difficult, intended.(‘Comparative Literature’, Times Literary
Supplement, 25th July 1968.)
• ‘A more balanced view, a truer perspective than is possible from the
isolated analysis of a single national literature, however rich in
itself.’ (Romanticism in Perspective: A Comparative Study of Aspects
of the Romantic Movement in England, France and Germany,
London 1969, p. 277.
• For Arnold ‘… Everywhere there is connection, everywhere there is
illustration: no single event, no single literature, is adequately
comprehended except in relation to other events, to other
literatures’. (Matthew Arnold, On The Modern Element in
Literature. Inaugural Lecture delivered in the University of Oxford,
14 th Nov ., 1857.) Ex Mansfield park.
