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The evolution of comparative literature has been revealing, for more than a century, a sinuous process of self-definition: as of the beginning of the 20 th century, it has been emerging like a diverse set of research, with studies covering "international literary relations", from a historical perspective in line with the established tradition of founders and eventually building a comparative poetics, whose necessity and legitimacy are nowadays acknowledged. As far as its specific field is a "tertium comparationis, that does not belong to any of the studied texts" – or, we may add, to none of the domains to which it is associated in an interdisciplinary way – but "maintains relations with each of these", general and comparative literature is being mistaken for a "methodological utopia" (Pageaux 2000: 35). This (also) involves a relatively unrestrictive delimitation of the object and working methods (Wellek 1965: 282-295; Étiemble 1963), with all the positive connotations or the opposite ones associated with this state of fact. At the "crossroads of certain sets", each with its particularities, comparative literature beneficially feeds on these very "interferences", "meetings, exchanges" (Pageaux 2000: 34 – 35) between literatures and between domains of study. However, its very flexibility – available for constant assimilation and adaptation – determines the problem of a rigorous comparatist "methodology", founded on a coherent theory (Greimas & Courtès 1979: 49), to remain yet unsolved. The contributions of Étiemble (1958; 1963), Munteano (1967) or Marino (1988; 1998), among others, built around the concepts of "invariant" and literary "constant" have thus shaped, as of the middle of the 20 th century, a completely up-to-date research programme – yet unfinished – able to associate literary and intercultural studies, comparative literature and (inter)cultural anthropology. Resurfacing, at about the same time, the "intersemiotic" relations between literature and arts, Jakobson (1963) foreshadowed, in turn, today’s multi- and intermedial studies, even the latter’s crossing with the wide domain of comparative literature, as it is now globally understood: like an eminently interdisciplinary and – how else if not – intercultural domain. As a form of reverse ekphrasis, a piece of music or a dance may re(-)present a literary text. This paper proposes an analysis on the measure in which the semio-narrative categories and the Greimasian actantial model are relevant for the understanding of choreographic discourse as reverse ekphrasis. In particular, the study considers choreographies inspired by literary (pre)texts or pre-established narrative frames. In dance, gestural statements can be narratively semantized, caught – and thus clarified – within a story and within a constitutive aesthetics of ambiguity.
"Comparative literary studies in the twenty-first century: towards a transcultural perspective?
CSAA 2011 Conference Proceedings. Cultural ReOrientations and Comparative Colonialities. , 2012
In an increasingly globalised and globalising world, „culture‟ appears as „an important determinant of subjectivity‟ and, consequently, of creative expression (Beautell 2000). With this in mind, Tötösy de Zepetnek (1999) prompted researchers to merge the comparative study of literature with that of cultural studies, embracing what he designated the new „comparative cultural studies‟ approach. If we are to accept Tötösy de Zepetnek‟s challenge, however, as I argue in this paper, it would be better to adopt a transcultural theoretical paradigm more apt to deal with the cultural complexities of the twenty-first century mobile age. Not only does „transculture/ality‟ – the combined notion of „transculture‟ (Epstein 1995, 2009) and „transculturality‟ (Welsch 1999, 2009) – appear to be endowed with the kind of dynamic non-linear nature and flexibility most needed in dealing with the fast- changing patterns and transformations in cultures and literatures, but it also seems to promote a new „borderless‟ comparative methodology. In doing so it marks an attempt to move away from nationalist stances and the insistence on the periphery–centre, colony– empire, ethnic–mainstream, pure–hybrid dichotomies with which comparative studies (especially within a postcolonial perspective) have been so far associated. It also offers the possibility of overcoming the nihilistic, self-defeating nature of anything „post-‟ to embrace instead the „visionary power‟ (Braidotti 2006), vitalist possibilities and new beginnings inherent in an approach that accepts the prefix proto- (starting from „protoglobal‟: Epstein 2004) when dealing with our contemporaneity.
Influences, Intertextualities, Genres : History of Naturalism and Concepts of Comparative Literature
Canadian review of comparative literature, 2010
Pourquoi la littérature comparée?" begins Yves Chevrel in his 2006 guidebook to comparative literature, La littérature comparée (3). Such anxiety over the purpose of comparative literature is not new. As Ulrich Weissman argues, since its emergence in the nineteenth century, comparative literature has yielded to a nearly pathological urge to question its fate constantly (167). The permanent crisis of comparative literature seems to be unending. Franco Moretti in his article "Conjectures on World Literature" declares that the discipline has not lived up to the promise shown at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Postcolonial studies and an improved awareness of the unread literature of cultures outside the mainstream topographies of the literary atlas have eroded the credibility of a discipline that has traditionally been limited to Western Europe, "mostly revolving around the river Rhine," as Moretti puts it (1). In addition to the inability of doing justice to minor languages and small cultures, the crisis of comparative literature has been a methodological one. In his work The Challenge of Comparative Literature, published in 1992, Claudio Guillén names the genetic survey of literary contacts as the most recent theory of comparative literature (69). Comparative studies are still too often limited to observation of evident resemblances and mapping of literary influences, while no proper methods exist for a demanding interpretation of cultural relations that are often hybrid, dynamic, and impure. In this essay, I take up the challenge of comparative literature from a Finnish brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND AESTHETICS
A comparative study of two spiritual leaders from Africa and India in ARROW OF GOD by Chinua Achebe and SAMSKARA by U.R. Anantha Murthy. If world literature is to continue to be an exciting core of the humanities, it cannot afford to remain parochial. It is incumbent on its proponents to develop studies in the field in an international or multicultural manner embracing the rich and diverse cultures of the world to present what it means to live in a true multicultural global community. No other field is able to examine cultural mechanisms, manipulations, and processes in quite the same way as has literature. As a central discipline in the humanities, literature has a centripetal force that brings various strands of many disciplines into discussion.
Concepts of World Literature Comparative Literature and a Propo
Follow this and additional works at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: clcweb@purdue.edu
This study focuses on issues such as what comparative literature is or not, how it is perceived today, what its benefits are, what kinds of mistakes are made in theory and practice in comparisons of the texts. The term 'literature' has been scene of plentiful discussions from the Greek and Latin civilizations to our age. From philosophical approaches to literary discourses, from poetry to tragedy, from story to novel, and the other literary genre, numerous masterpieces have been written, discussed and criticized. From the East to the West and from the North to the South the writers have been influenced by each other's works, the world has welcomed with an enormous world literature. Thus, comparative approaches, interactions and interests to the texts behind the boundaries across national literatures led to the source of the birth of 'comparative literature' to be discussed in scientific context, to be theorized, and especially flourished during 19th century. Here I want to emphasize inaccuracies in perceptions and practices of comparative literature today, rather than to the historical development of comparative literature as an academic discipline interested in the literature of two or more different languages, cultures or nations. Keywords