Some Theoretical and Methodological Topics for Comparative Literature
1987; Duke University Press; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1773005
ISSN1527-5507
Autores Tópico(s)Translation Studies and Practices
ResumoThe phrase obviously does not imply the same things as or French is not a language in which one writes but a kind of study. In fact once held such a meaning, as bungaku does in Japanese still, as perhaps the characters also do in Chinese and as Department of English does. The issues have always been what one studies and how. Some have supposed that comparison was feasible only within a common culture and others that generic study or literary movements (Romanticism, realism) deserve attention. There is no reason to dismiss these conceptions but rightly or wrongly they have not held central interest to recent Western students. Probably the most striking development in the past fifteen years has been the inclusion of literary theory as a subject for comparative literature. But much of what passes for literary theory in the West has little that is genuinely comparative. In fact, the first thing that must be said about comparative literature is that its present practice is seldom comparative in any radical way and that, when efforts are made to compare (for example) the treatment of nature by Wordsworth and Du Fu or Matsuo Basho, the results are seldom impressive. Moreover, until recently there has been little effort to incorporate non-Western evidence into Western comparative study, just as the Chinese have for centuries ignored the literature of their neighbors, unless it was written in Chinese. There are many hopeful signs that the old narrow attitudes are yielding to broader views. At the tenth congress of the International Comparative Literature Association at New York University in 1982, there was unprecedented representation of speakers on Asian literature, although south Asia and even Korea were little in evidence as intellectual concerns. In the United States, Indiana University deserves credit
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