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)
• {…} 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)
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The Issue of Eurocentrism: See the following article by Susan Basnnett
Susan Basnnett
pp. 3-11 | 10.1353/ccs.2006.0002
