Travel Literature

• If World Literature is the movement of literatures across the world, Travel Literature is the body of literature that deals with movement .i.e. travel with every connotation the word entails. 

• Travel Literature is important to comparative literature studies because it is the embodiment of contact between cultures. Travel Writing naturally encompasses the interaction of identity with alterity. It is an interaction that constitutes the core of studies in comparative literature. 

• Travel Writing played an important role in literary history:

- It has contributed to the development of personal writing. (diaries, journals, autobiographies… first person narrative) 

- It has contributed to the rise of the novel in England: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is a travel narrative. 

• Texts of travel literature can be both fiction (although fiction is often based and founded on real travels like is the case of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness) or it can also be non-fiction (for instance, the journals held by the pilgrims like William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation or by explorers who traveled to America like the journal of Captain John Smith or the journal of Captain James Cook)

• Oral narratives about distant places are not excluded from the body of Travel Literature. 

• Travel Writing must have existed ever since humans have known travel. However this genre has mainly flourished after the discovery of the Americas. 

• According to Mary Campbell: "It is a genre that confronts at their extreme limits, representational tasks proper to a number of literary kinds: the translation of experience into narrative and description, of the strange into the visible, of observation into the verbal construct of fact; the deployment of personal voice in the service of transmitting information (or of creating devotional texts); the manipulation of rhetorical figures for ends other than ornament."

• Travel Writing describes the encounter with the other, with the strange, with the foreign, with the unknown. It is the textuality of a personal discourse accounting for the experience with otherness.  Travel narratives are thus known to be Narratives of Difference. 

• As Travel narratives work on the basis of an "operation of translation", they are aimed at transforming difference into sameness. They narrate difference and transform it into something intelligible for the self.

• This "operation of translation" causes the othering (marginalization, inferiorization) of difference. 

Example of the native Americans:

• The video shows how that which is completely unknown (native americans) is defined in terms of that which is known (indians). Imposing that faulty definition on the native americans attests how the new comers sought only to consolidate their old knowledge as they thought of it as absolute and unquestionable. Their old knowledge is superior and it is imposed on the natives though it is false. By that the natives are othered. 

• Columbus is not discovering the Americas per se but comforting his biblical vision of the world. He is seeing in the "new world" what he already knew.

• There is a possibility of narrating difference without othering it. When looking at difference from its inside not its outside. Narrating through the perspective of alterity and otherness by making a detachment from identity and selfhood. It is possible by questioning old personal knowledge and being open for new visions seen through the eyes of the other. For instance Mircea Eliade's The sacred and The Profane looks at the cannibalistic other without value judgement i.e. without any othering "process of transformation".    

• In this respect, travel is not only about the encounter with the Other but also about the encounter with the Self. It is an inner movement from ignorance (innocence) to knowledge through experience. It is a growing up process instead of "transformation process" mainly because it allows for new knowledge to be acquired.

  

Schools of Comparative Literature

The French School:

The French school sets conditions on both the studied literary texts on the one hand as well as on the relationship of influence between them on the other hand. It is also obsessed with terminology and makes distinction between influence, reception, borrowing and imitation. Comparatists of the French School also distinguish between direct / indirect influence, literary / non-literary influence, positive / negative influence. 

All the conditions set by the French school has led the discipline of comparative literature to a dead end. 

Because it obsessed itself with the link of causality, more investigations were made outside the texts instead of dealing with the texts themselves. The discipline lost its track and failed to meet the purposes it has set for itself at the beginning mainly when it comes to defeating nationalism. Instead of eliminating it, it has accentuated it. 

The fields of study of comparative literature according to the French school:

1/ Literary Schools and Genres

2/ Ideological Echoes

3/ Image Echoes

4/ Verbal Echoes

5/ Human Models and Heroes   

The American School:

The American school came as a reaction against the French school.

It's main aim was to depoliticize comparative literature by going beyond the political borders of literary texts. 

It is mainly based on universalism and interdisciplinarity.

It is has mainly two fields of study:

Parallelism:

• It does not give importance to the link of causality.

• It gives no importance to influence. There is a possibility of dealing with literary texts not being in contact of whatsoever kind but having similar contexts or realities.

• If influence exists between literary texts, the importance does not lie in the influence itself but rather in the context. If the context does not allow for influence to be effective, influence will never take place in the first place.

Intertextuality: 

It is the reference of a given text to another text.

New texts are superposed on old texts.

New texts (Hypertexts) are always read under the light of old texts (Hypotexts).

Literature is a continuous and an ongoing process of reworking and refashioning old text.

Old texts turn into some sort of raw materials used for the creation of new ones. 

Reading materials:

[PDF] Theories of Comparative Literature - South Valley University

Origins and Development of Comparative Literature

First Appearance of the Term:

Susan Bassnett in her Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction states:

There is General agreement that comparative literature acquired its name from a series French anthologies used for the teaching of literature, published in 1816 and entitled Cours de littérature comparée. In an essay discussing the origins of the term, René Wellek notes that this title was 'unused and unexplained' but he also shows how the term seems to have crept into use through 1820s and 1830s in France. He suggests that the German version of the term, 'vergleichende Literaturgeschichte', first appeared in a book by Moriz Carrière in 1854, while the earliest English usage is attributed to Matthew Arnold, who referred to 'comparative literatures' in the plural in a letter of 1848. (page 12)

Why the use of the adjective "comparative"?

At the time, the scientific boom has led to the rise of comparatism as a method or an approach in the philosophy of science where a given thing is not judged to be true or false in itself but as related to something else. Comparatism was the spirit of the age. Comparatism was the methodology employed in most disciplines and literature was no exception. 

The Historical Context Undermining the Birth of Comparative Literature:   

According to Susan Basnnett, "The term 'comparative literature' appeared in an age of transition. In Europe, as nations struggled for independence - from the Ottoman Empire, from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from France, from Russia - and new nation states came into being, national identity (whatever that was) was inextricably bound up with national culture (however that was defined)." (page 20)

The Mechanisms Undermining the Birth of Comparative Literature:  

What becomes apparent when we look at the origins of comparative literature is that the term predated the subject. People used the phrase 'comparative literature' without having clear ideas about what it was. With the advantages of retrospection, we can see that 'comparative' was set against 'national', and whilst the study of 'national' literatures risked accusations of partisanship, the study of 'comparative' literature carried with it a sense of transcendence of the narrowly nationalistic. In other words, the term was used loosely but was associated with the desire for peace in Europe and for harmony between nations. Central to this idealism was also the belief that comparison could be undertaken on mutual basis. (Susan Basnnett, P21).

Comparative literature was a reaction to nationalism in Europe.   

The Crisis of Comparative Literature:

Comparative literature as a term seems to arouse strong passions, both for and against.

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 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'. Instead of something called comparative literature, he suggested that the proper object of study should be literary history. (Basnnett, P03)

For:

• {…} François Jost 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 if the cultural universe, inclusive and comprehensive.

• 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 (Wellek & Warren)

While opponents of comparative literature suggested that comparative literature is nothing but another name for literary history; proponents of comparative literature argued that it is much wider in scope and that it provides us with the bigger picture instead of the narrow perspective of literary history.

The Dead End of Comparative Literature:

'We spend far too much of our energy talking … about Comparative Literature and not enough of it comparing the literature,' complained Harry Levin in 1969, urging more practical work and less agonizing about the theory. But Levin's proposal was already out of date; by the late 1970s a new generation of high-flying graduate students in the West had turned to Literary Theory, Women Studies, Semiotics, Film and Media Studies and Cultural Studies as the radical subject choices, abandoning Comparative Literature to what were increasingly seen as dinosaurs from a liberal - humanist prehistory. (Basnnett, P05)

Development of Comparative Litetrature Outside Europe:

• Yet even as that process was underway in the West, comparative literature began to gain ground in the rest of the world. New programmes in comparative literature began to emerge in China, in Taiwan, in Japan and other Asian countries, based, however, not on any ideal of universalism but on the very aspect of literary study that many western comparatists had sought to deny: the specificity of national literatures. (Basnnett, P05)

• Ganesh Devy goes further, and suggests that comparative literature in India is directly linked to the rise of modern Indian nationalism, nothing that comparative literature has been 'used to to assert the national cultural identity'. There is no sense here of national literature and comparative literature being incompatible. (Basnnett, P05)

• The work of Indian Comparatists is characterized by a shift of perspective. For decades, comparative literature started with western literature and looked outwards; now what is happening is that the West is being scrutinized from without. (Basnnett, P06)

• The growth of national consciousness and awareness of the need to move beyond the colonial legacy has led significantly to the development of comparative literature in many parts of the world, even as the subject enters a period of crisis 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 that it is employed to explore both indigenous traditions and imported (or imposed) traditions, throwing open the whole vexed problem of the canon. There is no sense of crisis in this form of comparative literature, no quibbling about the terms from which to start comparing, because those terms are already laid down. What is being studied is the way in which national culture has been affected by importation, and the focus is that national culture. Ganesh Devy's argument that comparative literature in India coincides with the rise of modern Indian nationalism is important, because it serves to remind us of the origins of the term 'Comparative Literature' in Europe, a term that first appeared in an age of national struggles, when new boundaries were being erected and the whole question of national culture and national identity was under discussion throughout Europe and the expanding United States of America. (Basnnett, P08-09)

• The new comparative literature is calling into question the canon of great European masters. (Basnnett, P09)

• The opening statements of The Empire Writes Back (Subtitled: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures) include the following phrases: "the term 'post-colonial' … is most appropriate as the term for the new cross-cultural criticism which merged in recent years and for the discourse which this is constituted." What is this but comparative literature under another name?  (Basnnett, P10)

The New Crises in Comparative Literature: 

• The Issue of Translation Studies: Comparative literature has traditionally claimed translation as a sub-category, but this assumption is now being questioned. (Basnnett, P10)

• The Issue of Eurocentrism: See the following article by Susan Basnnett

Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty-First Century

Susan Basnnett

From: Comparative Critical Studies 

Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2006 

pp. 3-11 | 10.1353/ccs.2006.0002

Introduction to Comparative Literature: Towards a Definition.

There is no exact definition of comparative literature. Like any other concept in the humanities in general and in literature in particular, it is controversial and debatable and subject to change across time and space.

However, we can set some characteristics and specificities that constitute the spirit of comparative literature as it is known today:

• Comparative literature as is acknowledged and recognized by most renown universities in the world is a well established discipline.

• The object of study of this discipline is literary texts 

• The way those literary texts are approached in comparative literature is what constitutes the core of comparative literature. Comparative literature does not isolate the literary text and it rather relates it to other literary and non literary elements outside the text and with which the text interacts. As a discipline, it studies the connections, the relationships, the contacts and the influences constituting the text's natural network (i.e. the network in which the text has been created). 

• The comparatist do not invent those connections. They already do exist. The comparatist explores them and unveils them. The influences are not always clear or easily seen and the comparatist's task is to make them visible, to identify them and to go deeper in studying them. 

• Comparative literature deals with all the elements with which the literary text interacts without any confinement. It studies the interactions of a literary text with other texts from other cultures, from other national literatures, from other times, from other spaces. In this respect, it is open and tends always to push the boundaries further and further. Through its  inclusive nature, Comparative literature is intertextual, intercultural, international and it crosses the boundaries of time and space.  

• Comparative literature is not only confined to the study of the connections existing between different literary texts. This inclusive discipline does not exclude the study of the influences existing between a literary text and other disciplines (philosophy, science, psychology, sociology, politics, anthropology...) In this respect, it is interdisciplinary. 

• Comparative literature is not confined to the literary field. It also studies the influences existing between a literary text and the arts. The mutual illumination existing between literature and the arts is an important one in comparative literature's field of study. 

• As a conclusion one could say that comparative literature is a vast field of investigation, however, it also requires depth.

Further readings: 

The status of comparative literature as a discipline has been subject to change across time and space. As a disciplines it has faced many issues. It is important to consider the status of comparative literature today as well as the new issues that comparative literature is facing.

For such a purpose, it is indispensable to deal with Susan Basnnett's "Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty-First Century." The article mainly deals with Gayatry Shakravorty Spivak's statement about the death of comparative literature and the issue of eurocentrism concomitant and inherent in comparative literature as a discipline. 

The article is available online and can be downloaded in a pdf file from the website of Project Muse. 

Click on the following link to see it: 

Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty-First Century

Susan Basnnett

From: Comparative Critical Studies 

Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2006 

pp. 3-11 | 10.1353/ccs.2006.0002