clcweb contents 2.4 (2000)

Jan Walsh HOKENSON
Comparative Literature and the Culture of the Context
Abstract: In her article "Comparative Literature and the Culture of the Context," Jan Walsh Hokenson poses a series of interrogatives around the question of what, as comparatists, we have learned about "literature in the context of the culture it represents" (Mario J. Valdés). She argues that in theoretical terms, culture has become the new vessel for the old wine of sources and influences, and that global intercultural contexts will change the analytical categories for comparatists in the coming millennium. In Hokenson's opinion, if comparative literature is to survive it must regain the panoptic view, and if it is to thrive as an academic discipline, it will have to realize its historical aim of embracing all literature, notably of the East as well as the West. And finally, Hokenson proposes that comparatists clarify the credentials of the discipline, as historically rooted in the analysis of cross-cultural contexts, so that the discipline may assume its logical and deserved role as premier mode of critical study in the coming era of an emergent global poetics.

Slobodan SUCUR
Theory, Period Styles, and Comparative Literature as Discipline
Abstract: In his article, "Theory, Period Styles, and Comparative Literature as Discipline," Slobodan Sucur attempts to answer the following question: Can a rapprochement be brought about between various, often antagonistic, literary-theoretical views and the concept of comparative literature itself, which requires accord, consensus, agreement, etc., for it to function as a concrete body and discipline? Sucur attempts dealing with this question in three parts of the paper: First, he establishes a relationship/link between the theoretical discord of today (humanism, formalism, deconstruction, etc.) and the high theorizing which began during the Jena-Berlin phase of Romanticism (Shelling, Hegel, F. Schlegel, etc.); secondly, he attempts linking the origin of comparative literature with later Romanticism (Virgil Nemoianu's idea of the Biedermeier) in order to account for some inconsistencies between ideas of "theory" on the one hand, and "discipline" on the other; and thirdly, he speculates on whether or not "literary history" -- an idea often neglected now -- can be the bridge where literary theory meets up with comparative literature as a disciplinary endeavor, that is, in the act of writing a comparative literary history.

Karl S.Y. KAO
Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West
Abstract: In his article, "Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West," Karl S.Y. Kao offers a comparative reading of the ideological function of metaphor within Eastern and Western thinking. Nietzsche is recognized as the earliest serious challenger to the concepts of meaning and truth within the West, whilst Derrida and de Man are discussed with respect to their conception that figurality is inherent within -- and integral to -- Western philosophical and literary discourse. Parallel to this conception of conceptuality is the Eastern view of language and literature. Kao notes that the Western opposition between logic and rhetoric is not inherent within -- or integral to -- Eastern thought. He examines various rhetorical figures within Eastern philosophy and literature and a contrasting between affective (expressive; East) and mimetic (representational; West) is urged and interrogated. Eastern thought may be distinguished by an awareness of the problematical status of the conceptuality of thought. Despite this awareness, parallel problems threaten to emerge -- whilst the West has tried to inaugurate a distinction between metaphor and concept, the East has tended to subsume them. On the one hand, we encounter a problematical distinction between meaning and truth; on the other hand, we encounter a problematic equivocation.

Antony TATLOW
Comparative Literature as Textual Anthropology
Abstract: In his article, "Comparative Literature as Textual Anthropology," Antony Tatlow proposes textual anthropology as a critic's approach in the comparative study of literature. If anthropology is "behavioural hermeneutics" (Clifford Geertz) with the implication of self-reflexivity, the anthropologist will be disposed to fashion in the object of attention what is neglected and that can therefore be described as the unconscious of his/her own culture. In an application of his framework, Tatlow relates totemic and utopian thought through the use of animal signs. In his article, Tatlow shows how cultural demands both fashion the ethnographer-critic and select the perspectives he/she must transcend. As auto-anthropologist, the artist "invents," instead of "describing," the Other. Tatlow discusses in his application of textual anthropology in comparative literature Gauguin and Brecht and shows how Lévi-Strauss enables us to understand Brecht’s response to Daoism and Buddhism as energised by the repressions in what we call the social or cultural unconscious.

Jola SKULJ
Comparative Literature and Cultural Identity
Abstract: In her article, "Comparative Literature and Cultural Identity," Jola Skulj proposes a framework inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin's work. Skulj argues that the validity of cultural identity cannot be an equivalent to the measure of originality of an inherent national subjectivity in it. Such an idea of identity concept, quite acceptable in the nineteenth century, is insufficient to the views in literary studies today. From the standpoint of comparative literature, cultural identity exists only through its own deconstruction and permanent multiplication of several cultural relations. The identity principle of individual cultures is in fact established through the principle of otherness or -- to use Bakhtin's terminology -- through the principle of dialogism. As any individuality, cultural identity is a meeting point of several cross-cultural implications. It is of a complex plurivocal character, open to its own changes in order to preserve its own being in a new context of interests. Skulj argues that cultural identity is genuinely an intertext expressed in many instances in and via culture texts including literature. Thus, permanently re-interpreted cultural identity undoubtedly refers to the field of research of cross-cultural interactions and such a concept of cultural identity pre-eminently belongs to an expanded field of comparative studies.

Marián GÁLIK
Interliterariness as a Concept in Comparative Literature
Abstract: In his article, "Interliterariness as a Concept in Comparative Literature," Marián Gálik observes that the concept of interliterariness has a relative short history and limited application owing to geo-political reasons. He traces the history of the concept and cites instances of its use within the Central European scholarship of comparative literature. Dionýz Durišin is identified as the most prominent exponent of the concept and Gálik then locates the question of interliterariness within the context of its potential applications. The concept of interliterariness is defended as both a guiding and unifying principle in so far as it is irreducible, relative, and encompassing. Interliterariness provides the universal concept of literature and the study of literature with an ontological grounding and epistemological justification. Literatures may therefore be compared and understood via a historical process and with respect to a systematic series of related literary facts across cultural boundaries, movements, and moments. Literature thereby remains an interliterary global community, one characterized by trans/formations. Consequently, the system(at)ic study of any given literature(s) should trans/form itself accordingly.

Hendrik BIRUS
The Goethean Concept of World Literature and Comparative Literature
Abstract: In his article, "The Goethean Concept of World Literature and Comparative Literature," Hendrik Birus presents a new reading and understanding of Goethe's famous dictum: "National literature does not mean much at present, it is time for the era of world literature and everybody must endeavour to accelerate this epoch" (Eckermann 198, 31 January 1827). According to Birus, this dictum is not to be taken at face value today and argues that Goethe's concept of world literature ought to be understood in the sense that today it is not the replacement of national literatures by world literature we encounter; rather, it is the rapid blossoming of a multitude of European and non-European literatures and the simultaneous emergence of a world literature -- mostly in English translations -- as two aspects of one and the same process. The understanding of this dialectic, Birus argues, ought to be one of the main targets of comparative literature today.

Marián GÁLIK
Concepts of World Literature, Comparative Literature, and a Proposal
Abstract: In his article, "Concepts of World Literature, Comparative Literature, and a Proposal," Marián Gálik surveys the concept of world literature as it occurs within comparative literature based on Goethe's Weltliteratur. Given its recurrent yet problematic occurrence, he proposes a way in which comparatists can acknowledge and address the problems of the concept of a world literature. The concept is surveyed across various texts and studies and is mapped out in accordance with the ways in which it has been defined and discussed. The picture that emerges is the problem of national delimitations within the context of an international setting. Gálik urges that the solution to this problem may be found via the development, pursuit, and administration of International Scientific Projects. In this way, various determinations may come to occupy and interrogate a shared conceptual terrain, namely, that of a world literature.

Comparative Literature in China

Abstract: In their co-authored article, "Comparative Literature in China," Xiaoyi Zhou and Q.S. Tong present a brief intellectual and institutional history of the discipline. According to Zhou and Tong, main features of the history of comparative literature in China include the fact that as an academic discipline and a mode of intellectual inquiry imported to China from the West in the early twentieth century, the discpline has always been a priori strategically political and the proposition that the development of comparative literature in China is closely related to the formation of China’s literary modernity includes the parallel issue of national identity. Further, Zhou and Tong argue that built upon the politics of national identity construction and the development of modernity, Chinese comparatists tended to remain traditional and adhered up to recent times to scholarly practices of traditional comparative literature. Thus, the said ideological background indeed determines some of the concerns Chinese scholars in their analysis of Chinese-foreign cultural relationships inquire into and the authors present the argument that this situation produced scholarship of lesser rigour. Ultimately, Zhou and Tong argue for a redirection of Chinese comparative literature into a more culture-oriented and less traditional comparative literature in China, similar to the situation of the discipline in the West.

Amiya DEV

Krištof Jacek KOZAK
Comparative Literature in Slovenia
Abstract: In his article, "Comparative Literature in Slovenia," Krištof Jacek Kozak provides a historical overview of the practice of theory in the discipline of comparative literature in Slovenia. Despite its small size and relative low profile, Slovenia is taken as an exemplar within comparative literature scholarship. Kozak observes that the development of comparative literature in Slovenia may be characterized by an attempt to both arbitrate and mediate between distinct poles. On the one hand, Slovenian scholarship has felt the need to secure or determine itself in accordance with its own interests and concerns. On the other hand, it has recognized the need to be in accord with various movements and determinations across national borders. This situation is primarily mediated via the accounts of Janko Kos, a prominent scholar of the field. Via Kos, Kozak traces the origins of comparative literature to various theoretical movements and counter movements, as practiced by principle theoreticians. Whilst a methodological pluralism has emerged, there is resistance to an "anything goes" approach in Kos' thought as well as by Slovene comparatists in general. This situation is highlighted by the occurrence of recurrent issues, questions, and problems, and the article converges around movements between distinct legacies and poles.

Manuela MOURAO
Comparative Literature in the United States
Abstract: In her article, "Comparative Literature in the United States," Manuela Mourao offers a historical overview of the debates about comparative literature as a discipline, from the early years of its institutionalization in the United States until the present. Mourao summarizes the most pointed -- and anxious -- interventions of prominent scholars in the field and she discusses the permanent sense of crisis that has typically been part of the discipline. Further, Mourao links the permanent anxiety of the discipline with the prescriptive tendencies that have continued to endure until the present. She then looks at the debates that followed the controversial "Bernheimer Report" of 1993, discusses briefly the development of the field since then, and points out specific ways in which comparatists have continued to push the discipline forward despite decades of self-conscious scrutiny and anxiety.

Eva KUSHNER
Is Comparative Literature Ready for the Twenty-First Century?
Abstract: In her article, "Is Comparative Literature Ready for the Twenty-First Century?" Eva Kushner observes that throughout its history, comparative literature has internalized as part of its own objectives and directives a major challenge: The need to renew its problematics and curriculums in response to the inherent diversity of literature within culture. She emphasizes that the vitality of the
discipline depends on an authentic pluralism capable of resisting the dominance of unanalyzed hierarchies and universals. Acknowledging that the entire history of world literature remains the potential material of comparative literature studies, Kushner favours an "open system" approach. The concept of an open system may be paradoxical but it is not self-contradictory: Its openness guarantees that access to canonization will be truly global while its systematicity guarantees that all data will be treated with equivalent criteria. Finally, Kushner favours an inductive rather than a monumentalizing approach to literary history and considers theory as a reflective process rather than an a priori framework.