Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Lipson Freed
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Specificity

The Conclusion explores how the logic of haunting might recast the stakes, if not the substance, of the World Literature/Comparative Literature debate. Briefly tracing some of the most influential arguments in favor of sameness—in the form of translation, literary circulation and critical expansiveness—and difference—in the form of singularity, historical specificity and untranslatability—the conclusion suggests that these two opposing positions are both valid and fundamentally irreconcilable. Recognizing that encounters with works of fiction, like encounters with ghosts, are only temporary allows for this kind of instability; ultimately, it is not the text, but the reader who is responsible for acting ethically toward others in the non-fictional world.

The world in Auerbach’s mouth: Weltliteratur after philhellenism

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-452
Author(s):  
Mathura Umachandran
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Intercultural Understanding ◽  
The World

Abstract We live in an age of globalized and globalizing phenomena: the contemporary agenda of academic inquiry takes in ‘networks’, ‘connectivity’, and other modes of articulating complex structures of human activity. In Comparative Literature and beyond, the idea of world literature has borne the weight of idealist intercultural understanding, the hopes of translation studies, and the anxieties around the failure of communication. Erich Auerbach offers a touchstone in the conceptual genealogy of world literature (Weltliteratur). This article illuminates how Auerbach’s Weltliteratur is predicated on a polemic with German philhellenism, tracked through Auerbach’s declaration that his idea is ‘ungoethisch’. Auerbach’s revisions to Weltliteratur constituted a strategy to render it a historicist concept. Since Auerbach’s notion of historicism was itself derived from nineteenth-century German humanism, this essay argues that Auerbach was attempting to go with Goethe beyond Goethe. Finally, this essay assesses how successful Auerbach’s decoupling of Weltliteratur from universalism, under the sign of Goethe and the Greeks. I suggest that Weltliteratur is still a pertinent concept today because of Auerbach’s intervention to install historicist and dialectical resources therein.

Against Global Literary Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Edmond
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
The World

Abstract Literary studies has taken a global turn through such institutional frameworks as global romanticism, global modernism, global anglophone, global postcolonial, global settler studies, world literature, and comparative literature. Though promising an escape from parochialism, nationalism, and Eurocentrism, this turn often looks suspiciously like another version of Anglo-European imperialism. This essay argues that, rather than continue the expansionary line of recent decades, global literary studies must allow other perspectives to draw into question its concepts, practices, and theories, including those associated with the terms literature, discipline, and comparison. As a settler colonial (Pākehā) scholar in Aotearoa New Zealand, I attend particularly to Māori literary scholars from Apirana Ngata, Te Kapunga Matemoana (Koro) Dewes, and Hirini Melbourne to Alice Te Punga Somerville, Tina Makereti, and Arini Loader. Their work highlights the limitedness of global literary studies in its current disciplinary guise. Disciplines remain important when they bring recognition to something previously marginalized, as in the battle to have Māori literature recognized within Pākehā institutions. What institutionalized modes of global literary studies need, however, is not discipline but indiscipline: a recognition of the limits of dominant disciplinary objects, frameworks, and practices, and an openness to other ways of seeing the world.

scholarly journals Maamesilasena maailmas ehk lihtsalt Jüri Talveti meetodist / On Jüri Talvet’s Comparative Method

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (17/18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne Merilai
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Bumble Bee ◽  
Leaves Of Grass ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Literary Histories ◽  
English Speaking World

Teesid: Artikkel defineerib maailmakirjanduse professor Jüri Talveti komparativistlikku meetodit nii maamesilase metafoori kui ka tema poolt tutvustatud mõistete edaphos (’pind’) ja episteme (’teadmine’) kaudu. Võrdleva kirjandusteadlase ülesanne on kahesuunaline: tutvustada eesti kirjandust maailmas ja vahendada mujal loodut meie kultuurile. Kuigi õpetlaste teoreetiline metasüsteem ja mõistevõrk – episteme – võib areneda väga keeruliseks, peab see alati juurduma edaphos’es kui toitvas pinnases, mille loovad sõnakunstiteosed ja rahvuslikud kirjanduslood. Avardades võrdlevat edaphos’t, aktiveerime ja rikastame ka maailma episteme’t. The article aims at defining the comparative method of Jüri Talvet, professor of comparative literature. This can be carried out by an application of Talvet’s own metaphor for himself – a bumble bee, or via two concepts elaborated by him – edaphos (base) and episteme (knowledge). The bumble bee, by nature more reclusive and peaceful but somehow more attractive looks than a regular bee flies out from its modest sod nest across blooming meadows, disseminating homely pollen among the leaves of grass of the wide world. Then it faithfully returns with nourishing nectar that feeds its family. As chairman of the Estonian Comparative Literature Association, and founder and editor-in-chief of the comparative literature journal Interlitteraria, Talvet has written: “Its purpose is to channel new literary-philosophical ideas from the international area to Estonia and, at the same time, to spread knowledge about Estonian literary and philosophical studies outside Estonia, as well as to let the wider world have some idea of Estonian literature itself which, because of the language barrier, has belonged traditionally to the majority of “silent” literatures of the world, unjustly ignored by the area of the dominant Western languages.” Yet, no matter how complex our theoretical meta-systems and conceptual framework – episteme – might develop, it always needs to be firmly based on edaphos as its foundation, that is, on works of literature and national literary histories. By extending the comparative edaphos, we also enrich the world’s episteme. It is therefore not surprising that, as a scholar with extensive knowledge of world literature, Talvet has great affinity for tellurism, an aesthetic concept used in Hispanic cultures that is largely unknown to the English-speaking world. 

scholarly journals A Comparative Study in the (myth of Pygmalion) between Bernard Shaw and Sadeq Hedayat

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Many ◽  
Bernard Shaw ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
European Renaissance

In our time, not too long ago, the universities of the world have been fast to take care of the study of an innovative type of technical and human studies, called the science of "comparative literature". Comparative research studies have grown and flourished rapidly in response to the demands of both mental and artistic life. This shows the increasing awareness at both the modern national and the international levels in order to develop through connecting with the international intellectual, nental and artistic currents to nurture ethics and originality. Comparative studies show that the beginning of the comparative literature goes back to the time when the Latin literature was connected to the Greek literature and the comparative literature was shaped in the era of European Renaissance. Today, it is one of the most authentic sciences in universities, with complex branches, due to its being an inevitable result of increasing human awareness and the result of the great demand by the conscious public to benefit from the many human and cognitive aspects provided by the comparative literature through its connection with the heritage of the world literature and unity of the human spirit in its past and present. One of the most important factors of the prosperity of any civilization is the degree of contact with and benefit from other civilizations. Long time ago, different cultures were used to enrich each other, and the relationship between cultures took many forms such as imitation, translation, influencing others, as well as the exchange of information between cultures, in addition to intellectual and cultural invasion and domination. It is impossible to imagine that a particular culture evolved without any contact with other cultures. Instead, any isolated culture certainly suffered from deterioration.

Jewish American Literature Against the World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Schreier
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
American Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Jewish American Literature ◽  
The World

Abstract By way of a brief genealogy of the Jewish American literary field and through the lens of recent attempts to imagine how comparative literature-based thinking about a concept of “world literature” can be critically productive for Jewish literary study, this article analyzes Jewish American literary studies’ prestige problem. Because it has persistently failed to theorize the intellectual and methodological assumptions underlying its practice, Jewish American literary study remains burdened by the essentialist implications of an ethnological historicism. This article ultimately argues that Jewish American literary study needs to take more seriously the possibilities offered by a materialist epistemology rather than the Jewish studies-based historicist ontology it has mostly taken for granted. “My hope is that a Jewish American epistemology can operate outside the penumbra of a tired and played-out concept of ethnicity—a term that unavoidably, if spectrally, posits a biologistic object at the heart of its historicist project—even as it might still claim the mantle of Jewish-y-ness.”

scholarly journals CZECH-SLOVAK COMPARATIVE STUDIES “REBORN”. A NEW ASSOCIATION ON THE WAY

Porównania ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 339-348
Author(s):  
Miloš Zelenka
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
The World ◽  
New Association ◽  
The One ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study ◽  
Globalized World

The paper conveys information on the current state of Czech and Slovak comparatist thought as regards its methods, thematical orientation and institutional base. Czech and Slovak comparative research has always been a complementary whole embracing, on the one hand, the tradition of Slavonic studies grounded in structural aesthetics (S. Wollman) and, on the other, the endeavour to develop the theory of interliterarines and interdisciplinary study of the world literature (D. Ďurišin). Much to our regret, the disruption of this “symbiosis” at the turn of 1990s resulted in losing contacts with the rest of the world. Therefore the prime objective of the newly established Czech-Slovak Association of Comparative Literature, based in the Institute for World Literature SAV, Bratislava, is to encourage Czech and Slovak literary research. The constitutive members of this association already in 2013 participated in the 20th World Congress of Comparative Literature in Paris (AILC/ICLA) so as to present the English version of their World Literature Studies journal under the title Comparative Literary Studies as Cultural Criticism. The first joint conference of Czech and Slovak comparatists (Slavica Litteraria 18, 2015, No. 1) was held in Bratislava in February 2015. For our next event, the 21st AILC Congress in Paris 2016, Czech and Slovak scholars, together with their foreign colleagues, have prepared a joint panel presentation Old and New Concepts of Comparative Literature in the Globalized World. Convinced that theoretical and methodological discourse is carried on in various languages and power stands, present-day Czech and Slovak comparative research, while following the pillar traditions of the past, espouses modern inspirations that obviously relinquish historical poetics and the theory of interliterariness, bound for exploring new cultural identities, post-colonial and area studies.

World

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jen Hui Bon Hoa
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Private Property ◽  
World Market ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Literary Canon ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American

In recent decades, world has emerged as one of the most fiercely contested concepts in literary studies. The more narrowly defined stakes of the debates over world literature concern the disciplinary mandate of comparative literature. One way of grasping the world as a problematic is in terms of a dispute over the correct unit of literary analysis. Should comparative literature scholars seek to illuminate broad historical patterns in the global circulation of influence as reflected, for example, in the morphology of literary genres or the adoption of tropes across different literary cultures? Or should they seek instead to come to grips with the singularity of the world—the unique systems of thought and meaning—presented in individual texts, using the methodology of close reading that offers a model for the ethical relation to otherness? The issue of scale is equally at play in the multiculturalist imperative to expand the literary canon beyond its traditional emphasis on European and Anglo-American traditions. While the general consensus is that undoing comparative literature’s Eurocentrism is crucial to the discipline’s continued relevance, the practical question of how to go about it has been contentious. If scholars are required to draw from a diversified literary canon, how can they attain the linguistic competence required to treat the enlarged field of inquiry with adequate hermeneutic care? The danger, according to some critics, is that world literature will normalize the study of literary texts in English translation. Another critique of such globalizing initiatives regards the value of diversity itself. Some have argued that conceiving of literary works as representatives of specific cultures or regions is itself a legacy of Orientalist Eurocentrism and that, therefore, a multiculturalist approach inadvertently entrenches the very problem it seeks to rectify. A range of political and ethical concerns are thus at stake in the endeavor to globalize comparative literature. Indeed, the concept of world literature has historically been bound up with an assessment of globalization’s liberatory potential and, increasingly, its oppressive effects. The emergence of world literature as a project or goal is often, though not always, traced back to Goethe at the beginning of the 19th century. Reflecting the Enlightenment value of universalism, Goethe’s evocation of Weltliteratur projects a world united through free literary exchange across borders and intercultural understanding. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels situate Goethe’s cosmopolitan vision in a materialist framework, presenting it as derivative of the economic transformations entailed in the world market. They also radicalize Goethe’s model of cosmopolitanism. Instead of an autonomous sphere of communication among the national literary traditions of the world, for them Weltliteratur stands metonymically for a future in which both the nation and private property—as manifested in the idea of national patrimony—are superseded by an internationalist commonwealth. Fleshing out the tension between Goethe’s and Marx’s visions of the globalized world, recent debates on world literature have generated productive confrontations between liberal humanistic, Marxist, deconstructive, and postcolonial perspectives on the gap between the world one inhabits and the world one wants.

Writing the Multilingual in Maghrebi Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-465
Author(s):  
Mustapha Ait kharouach
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Significant Determinant ◽  
Linguistic Barriers ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Multilingual Writing ◽  
The World ◽  
Inner Voices

Abstract Maghrebi literatures have been always approached from the lenses of colonial hegemony, either as postcolonial “Francophone” literatures, or as marginalized “derivative” literatures that mimic the “belle lettres.” Maghrebi literatures, however, offer a critical and highly crucial exercise to question and rethink the recent debates regarding the problematics of world literature. The main objective of this study is to intervene in the recent critical debates in the disciplines of comparative literature and world literature, with the postulates of a literary multilingualism that necessitates the task of rethinking the critical standards with which these disciplines approach literatures of the world. Writing the multilingual makes us think of the literary positionality of being a multilingual. This positionality is never understood without rethinking the very poetical and aesthetical dimensions of multilingual writing experience. Writing the multilingual highlights the imaginative space as a poetic factor that generates and evaluates those inner voices, images, rhythms, tensions, and memories as significant determinant of multilingual literatures. It rethinks in a sense what is common between languages of the same tongue. Furthermore, it transcends the linguistic barriers that avoid the realization of public sphere where all languages can meet and negotiate. In other words, writing the multilingual – literarily speaking – is making the realization of this shared space be possible, but also, it gives to the marginalized and subaltern spaces an opportunity to share its voiced world values.

scholarly journals Transnational literary history? Dutch-speaking writers in Karel van het Reve’s ‘ventistic’ Geschiedenis van de Russische Literatuur [History of Russian Literature]

Werkwinkel ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Michel De Dobbeleer
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract In his Geschiedenis van de Russische literatuur [History of Russian Literature, 1985] the famous Dutch Slavist and essayist Karel van het Reve, links Russian writers, such as Gavriil Derzhavin and Aleksei Pisemskii to Dutch and Flemish ones, such as Vondel and Willem Elsschot. Further on, in the chapter on Lev Tolstoi, Multatuli’s Max Havelaar is cited, although it is clear from the start that none of these Dutch-speaking authors could have had any influence on the Russian writers to whom Van het Reve devotes his colourful chapters. In this article I explore the ‘transnational’ potential of Van het Reve’s self-willed literary-historiographical approach. It turns out that Van het Reve mentions most of these Dutch-speaking authors rather to indicate - directly or indirectly - that he (dis)likes them, than to contribute to the achievements of comparative literature. Both in his choice of authors and his way of practicing literary historiography Van het Reve manifests himself as a proponent of the vent (cf. the well-known vorm of vent or manner or man discussion). Nevertheless, some of his observations could be considered as transnational constellations (in the world-literature sense of the term).

scholarly journals Võrdleva kirjandusteaduse ja maailmakirjanduse sümbiootilise koosolu väljavaatest / Towards a Symbiotic Coexistence of Comparative Literature and World Literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (17/18) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jüri Talvet
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
World View ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Literary Creation ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Broad Field ◽  
The World

Teesid: Artiklis on sedastatud, et võrdleval kirjandusteadusel ei ole kunagi tegelikult olnud avaral kirjandusväljal otsustavat ega keskset staatust, ent samal ajal pole ka kirjandustraditsioonide põhjalik eraldi uurimine suutnud täita arvukaid tühikuid kirjandusloome kui laiema kultuurinähtuse mõistmisel, ehkki see mõjutab (sageli nähtamatult) tervete ühiskondade maailmavaadet ja väärtushinnanguid. Arendades edasi mõtteid, mis on esitatud raamatus „Sümbiootiline kultuur“ ning artiklis „Edaphos and Episteme of Comparative Literature“, aga ka Juri Lotmani ideid, on soovitatud kasutada sümbiootilist lähenemist kirjandusele, mis püüaks lepitada äärmuslikke vastandeid ning algatada dialoogi, tugevdades seega võrdleva kirjandusteaduse positsiooni ning ühtlasi maailma kirjanduste uurimise valdkonda. In his article Jüri Talvet postulates that comparative literature has never really enjoyed a pivotal or central status in the broad field of literary studies, yet at the same time specialized studies of separate literary traditions have not been able to fill numerous gaps in the understanding of literary creation as a broader cultural phenomenon influencing (although often invisibly) the world view and axiological attitudes of entire societies and vast communities of people. Developing some ideas presented in his book A Call for Cultural Symbiosis (2005) and in his article “Edaphos and Episteme in Comparative Literature”, (Intelitteraria 2005), as well as the ideas of Juri M. Lotman, Talvet proposes a symbiotic approach aimed at reconciling extreme oppositions and establishing a dialogue that would strengthen the position of the discipline of comparative literature, as well as the field of world literatures.  

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