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INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

 

Comparative Literature

Definition

Ø  Comparative literature can be simply defined as the study of texts across cultures

Ø  It is an area of exploration from where we can get a lot of information about the different literatures

Ø  Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries

Ø  The Corporatists always try to find that similar connection between two texts, cultures, literatures etc.

Ø  We, first start reading the text and then we arrive at comparison. We start comparing that text with another that has similarities and dissimilarities

Ø  Shelley and Bharathidasan

Ø  Thiruvalluvar and Bacon

Ø  Shakespeare and Elangovadikal

 

How CL Came into Being

Ø  First appearance of the term was in

Ø  France  1816

Ø  Germany 1854

Ø  England 1848 Mathew Arnold

Ø  Georg Morris Cohen Brandes (1842–1927)

Ø  Goethe gave the term “World Literature (Weltliteratur)

Ø  Ziolkowski introduced in France, littérature comparée, in 1816

Ø  Matthew Arnold, an English poet and critic used the 'comparative literature'  in 1848

 

What is the comparatist’s job?

Simply speaking, a comparatist is normally expected to

Ø    read the two texts to be compared

Ø  highlight the similarities

Ø  find out the differences

Ø  make clear the idea of influence

Comparative Literature By Prof. S. Yusuf

Importance of Comparative Literature

Ø  Comparative Literature becomes very important because academicians and literary critics have begun to realize the immense potentials of the challenging field of Comparative Literature

Comparison in Literature

Ø  Comparison is a common instinct, true of human experience. No wonder, it is reflected in literary response and aesthetic experience also

Ø  First, it manifested itself as a system of literary appreciation in the Western literature and now it has spread to different parts of the world

Ø  Comparison in literature is made into comparative the technical use of comparisons of themes, genres, and movements and of a minimal pair of two literatures going beyond the confines of the one country and through translation

Ø  Comparative literature transports literary materials from one language to another

Literary Comparison in Greek and Latin Literature

Ø  All the major critics like Aristotle, Longinus and others made a revealing comparative study of the structural and rhetorical devices used by the classical poets

Ø  Horace in his Ars Poetica, there are comparative assessments of the artistic qualities of Greek and Latin works

Ø  Horace studied the great epic of his language, Virgil’s Aeneid, against the background of the Greek classics The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer

Ø  European critics Dryden and Johnson in England

Ø  Boileau and Sainte Beuve in France

Ø  Goethe and Schlegel in Germany

Ø  Rabindranath Tagore and Bharathi in India

Comparison with what?

Ø  CL is a study of literature in comparison

Ø  Firstly, comparison of two or more similar or even dissimilar forms or trends within the span of literature, of the same language

Ø  Secondly, it could be a comparison of two or more similar or even dissimilar forms or trends in the literature, of the two or more languages (in translation)

Aspects of Comparative Literature

The study centers around several comparative aspects of literatures. Ravign has put it.....

(a)    ‘A research into the problems connected with the influences exercised reciprocally by various literatures” – a study of  international and cultural relations

(b)    Of international themes and motifs of migration of  themes and motifs

(c)    CL could be the study of literary evolution, marking its inception, culmination and decline

(d)   It could be an overall study of literary history in general in the context of the milieu

(e)   (e) A study of historical relativism – an assessment of the present against the background of the past traditions

(f)     Rene Wellek has opined, ‘A study of all literature from an international perspective with a consciousness of  unity of all literary creation and experience- independent of ethnic and political boundaries’

Comparative Literature covers the following aspects

(I) Influence - an attempt to trace the influence of a writer and is an important branch of Comparative Literature

(ii) Analogy - a comparison in which an idea or a thing is compared to another thing that is quite different from it

(iii) Thematology – a study of themes in literature

iv) Genre Studies - (The study of a genre in this way examines the structural elements that combine in the telling of a story and finds patterns in collections of stories)

Warren and Wellek- divide between ultimate and subdivisions-drama- mystery, morality, tragedy and comedy prose fiction- novel and romance

(v) Translations

(vi) Literature and Other Arts (Literature and the arts spans everything from writing books, designing buildings, sculpting stone, and painting on a canvas, to designing fashion, writing an article, and acting in a play)

(vii) Literature and Ideas (Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, etc.)

 

Different Terminologies to Refer to Comparative Literature

(1)    Comparative Literature – English

(2)    Literateur Comparee – French

(3)    Literature Comparada – Spanish

(4)    Literature Comparata – Italian

(5)    Vergleichnde Literatur – German

(6)    Oppilakkiyam – Tamil

(7)    Hikakau Bunkaku - Japanese

What are going to discuss in the paper ‘Comparative Literature’?

  1. Definition, Importance and Scope
  2. National, Comparative, General and World Literature
  3. French, American, Russian and Indian Schools of Comparative Literature

IV. Aspects of Comparative Literature

Ø  Influence

Ø  Analogy

Ø  Thematology

Ø  Genre Studies

Ø  Translations

Ø  Literature and Other Arts

Ø  Literature and Ideas


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