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The Definition and History of Comparative Literature and its Most Relevant Aspects "Oh, you teach comparative literature. Which literatures do you compare?" (Hernadi 22) This attempt to discuss definitions for comparative literature and its history as a discipline must necessarily take a students perspective, a beginners at that. From a position of nearignorance, the most natural assumption appears to be that voiced in Paul Hernadis essay, and cited above as epigraph. While it is true that most practitioners in the field of comparative literature, and academics who teach it, would regard this framing of the definitional problem as a misconception1, I would like to attempt in this brief assignment to use it as an entry point into a more informed discussion. One of my premises, then, is that this definition of comparative literature may be uninformed and narrow, but is a true account of how the discipline appears to and appeals to the novice. As the mission statement for department of comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley tells prospective students in very simple terms, every literary comparatist, has the freedom to choose what is compared, so long as s/he is comparing and is dealing with literature. The comparatist may compare authors, works, features or portions of works, literary schools or movements, versions of translation or pieces of criticism. (Berkeley, Hernadi generally) As this assignment will briefly glance at, this is one approach to defining comparative literature by its scope and practices what areas of social production it occupies, and what it does in these areas. We will return to a discussion of scope later in this assignment, but we may here note one, optimistic view on the practices of comparative literature and their development. Jan M. Ziolkowski argues that, comparative literature can and will survive, so long as balances
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See for instance John Fletcher, who, after referring to Welleks The Crisis of Comparative Literature to explain the difficulty of defining the new disciplines subject matter and methodology, remarks: Comparative literature, of course, compares; but what? Fletcher 108.

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persist between theory and practice, so long as interdisciplinarity does not come at the cost of disciplinarity, and so long as the indivisible relationships uniting humanism, humanities, and humaneness are not forgotten. While comparative literature retains its emphases on languagetraining and critical skills, and while it satisfies desires of students to transcend boundaries culturally, interpretatively, and otherwise, it will not only always remain alive but even often thrive. (Ziolkowski 16) After this first type of definitional project, we may attempt to make out others. How can the mistaken idea of comparative literature, however widespread among non-practitioners, open a survey of its definition, history and relevance? We may propose that this public impression about comparative literature is, in fact, a large factor in its relevance. To compare literatures together is a practice that has been connected both in scholarly and lay understandings with the need for international and cross-cultural understanding and communication. This method of understanding comparative literature focuses on its function in a system or family of disciplines, all aimed at making sense of the world and adapting to history and to ideological shifts as they do so.2 Ziolkowskis account is an accessible example of this kind of definition, approaching comparative literature through its history and its interactions with the dominant political/social/philosophical thoughts of different eras. Ziolkowskis definition is of comparative literature from the point of view of globalization, and is thus also a defense of its relevance as a discipline which aids our understanding of the globalised world. In this account, as well as in that of Ulrich Weisstein, great expansions of power and hegemony in history have coincided with
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The separation of comparative literature from the type of ideology which is supposed to have fathered it (in many accounts of its history) is no easy task. Rene Wellek, for instance, has quoted with approval Irving Babbitts criticism of comparative literature divorced from humanism: comparative literature will prove one of the most trifling of subjects unless studied in strict subordination to humane standards That Harry Levin has been named Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature is not only a tribute to Irving Babbitt but also a guarantee of a continuity of humane standards at Harvard, even though he might interpret the word humane differently from Babbitt's special meaning. The right meaning of humanism was the issue at Chapel Hill and is still the issue in comparative literature today. Wellek a 326.

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aspirations for international understanding, which have in turn fueled the intellectual movements and schools that give birth to comparative literature. Weisstein states, As so often in the history of Comparative Literature, a war, along with the pacifist tendencies sparked by it, gave new impetus to the now lingering discipline. (Weisstein 215) The term and the discipline recognised as such were first seen after the Napoleonic wars. In the late nineteenth century, the discipline develops rapidly, in a climate of growing interaction and cultural exchange and political internationalism. However, the discipline responds also to great divisions, such as its flowering into full status as a discipline after the Second World War. The American side or school of comparatists grew and expanded into universities and departments most rapidly during and after the Vietnam War. Comparative literature has always worried its supporters as well as its skeptics. At the same time it has experienced a constant crisis within. In each episode it has responded by enlarging its purview and self-definition. Thus in the late 20th century it transcended the European literatures that had long been its bedrock to embrace East-West literary and cultural relations in ever-broader outward orbits, encompassing eventually first Edward Said's orientalism, then Homi Bhabha's deconstructivist postcolonialism, and finally Gayatri Spivak's eclecticism. (Ziolkowski and Lopez generally) We have now tentatively identified two approaches to reading definitions of comparative literature and discussions of its scope and relevance and it bears emphasising that these are students approaches, not actual scholarly approaches this assignment is proposing. It also bears clarifying that these two approaches scope and practice, and history and function are not separate from, leave alone in contradiction to, each other. In fact, in any definition we consult, we find these factors overlapping inextricably, even, to use Susan Bassnetts word, struggling. (Bassnett 1)

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Bassnetts influential work is an illustration of this imbrication of scope, practice, history and function as axes along which we may define a discipline. In Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty First Century, Bassnett engages with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks idea of the death of comparative literature as a discipline. Bassnetts definition, or account, or ideological position first of all takes a historical view of comparative literature as a discipline that developed over time, but whose initial or original shape and ideals have some value attached to them. If she argues for changes to this original comparative literature it is in the name of changes in the way literature is written. In other words, literatures as the subject-matter of the discipline are important to Spivak, who sees a great change in this subject in the shape of emergent literatures. Bassnett, while acknowledging this change, focuses on the practice and practitioners of the discipline. (Bassnett passim) The other version of how comparative literature is dated and aged, in fact, dead is Spivaks, and Bassnett seems to understand it as ideological or political in part. Bassnett says, The original enterprise of comparative literature, which sought to read literature trans-nationally in terms of themes, movements, genres, periods, zeitgeist, history of ideas is out-dated and needs to be rethought in the light of writing being produced in emergent cultures (emphasis added) and she backs this up with discussion of history The origins of comparative literature in the early nineteenth century show an uneasy relationship between broad-ranging ideas of literature, for example Goethe's notion of Weltliteratur, and emerging national literatures. In contrast, when Bassnett argues against Spivak, she characterises the argument, despite even some sympathy with it, thus: idiosyncratic and radical, a logical development of her notion of the subaltern and subaltern studies deriving from [Spivaks] own particular history... (emphasis added) (Bassnett 3-6)

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Bassnetts debate with Spivak is difficult for a beginner, but an invaluable illustration of the struggles between views, perspectives, subjectivities and priorities in defining comparative literature. This debate is one in which both scholars emphasise the history of the discipline, yet one (Spivak) sees it as politicised and the present practices as politically/ colonially tainted, and the other focuses on the disciplines demonstrated capacity for change. For Spivak, the interaction of the global market with the academic discipline is important; for Bassnett, the subjective position of the scholars in regard to their language and canon is. Bassnett sees the scholars as divided by their subjectivities/ identities and their priorities: For Spivak and Southern hemisphere scholars, the crucial issues of comparative literature are indeed politicised. In contrast, however, I believe that the crucial issues for European scholars are as much aesthetic as political. (emphasis added) We may conclude from an examination of this, tentatively again, that the most important step in defining comparative literature is resolving ones own position, subjectivity, politics and preferences. (Bassnett 5) The novice students position may be a good if humble one to start from, then, in studying definitions of comparative literature. Looked at from this perspective, the historical account of the discipline becomes even more interesting and specific if the focus is academies and departments in other words, an academic or university history. An early account of this sort is Werner Paul Friederichs, in 1945, which he follows by complaining that the comparative literature is declining and prescribing methods of teaching and demarcating it. Per Friederich, Harvard and Columbia were American leaders in the field of comparative studies, and drew for their tradition of comparative literature on a powerful European tradition which reached back to the second half of the eighteenth century. This tradition for Friederich begins in Switzerland and Germany, with Muralt, Bodmer, Mme. de Stael, Sismondi and Louis Betz (author of the important first bibliography of Comparative Literature), then Herder, Goethe, the Schlegels,

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leading to Max Koch. It seemed obvious to Friederich, and one assumes to many of his colleagues, that nineteenth and twentieth-century comparatism moved from these Swiss and German origins into theoretic work in the French school of comparative literature, exemplified by the Revue de Litterature Comparte, Baldensperger, Hazard, Tronchon, van Tieghem, Carre and others. In 1945, to this author, contemporary comparatism had been shaped by the French school and depended on this European lineage to continue to thrive. (Friederich generally) For a professor of comparative literature like Freiderich, the centres of comparative literature were naturally the great university departments Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Iowa, California, to mention only a few. While acknowledging the legitimacy and usefulness of locating the discipline in space and time like this, we can also see some of the symptoms of Western-centrism that Spivak relies on for her vision of appropriation of emergent cultures by dominant ones. Nor is Spivak alone in seeing comparative literature as a network of practices which can be ideologically infected or perpetuate hegemonies. Linda Hutcheon seriously regards the charge of what she calls complicity: complicit in that more problematic and guilty sense with economic (and cultural) capital, with globalization, with Eurocentric imperialism, and thus [with the] totalizing and homogenizing impulses that are said to be inherent in the very concept of comparability. Ziolkowski, too, makes the point that the models for comparative study that historically served during the extended pax americana seem poorly suited to terrorism, war, and globalization. In Ziolkowskis picture of the history of the discipline, it developed around an assumption of supranationalism and cannot easily accommodate itself to transnationalism. (Spivak c.f. Bassnett, Hutcheon 159, Ziolkowski 25) History, then, is a far from contentious way to define comparative literature, although by reading various accounts of it one can develop a very useful mental picture. Perhaps we may return to another factor, mentioned in the opening paragraphs of this assignment scope, or the

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subject matter of comparative literature. What, precisely, literature is has been debated in literary theory and criticism3; and how to define and separate the various literatures (plural) which comparative literature studies is no easy task. We may refer again to Paul Hernadi, who refers to Wellek, Weisstein and other authorities in summarizing very simply the history of the contentions over defining comparative literature. In doing this, he focuses the chief debates around three issues: first, the role of language in establishing the identity of a specific literature; second, the role of translations in the study of world literature; and third, the role of interdisciplinary theorizing in the cross-cultural study of literature beyond linguistic, ethnic, aesthetic, and political boundaries. Hernadi points out that, surmounting these debates, there is the fact that scholars regarding themselves as comparatists study subjects ranging from national literatures, genres, themes, translations, different media (even non-verbal media), and so on. Even definitions not very far separated in time can differ widely. For instance, Hernadi quotes Henry Remak in the erstwhile standard Handbook of Comparative Literature: Comparative literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular country, and the study of relationships between literature on the one hand and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts (e.g., painting, sculpture, architecture, music), philosophy, history, the social sciences (e.g., politics, economics, sociology), the sciences, religion, etc., on the other. In brief, it is the comparison of literature with other spheres of human expression. On the other hand, Rene Wellek has defined the discipline without a focus on its scope, by urging that comparative literature can best be defended and defined by its perspective and spirit as the study of all literature from an international perspective, with a consciousness of the unity of all literary creation and experience. (Hernadi 23, Wellek b 19)
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See, for instance, Terry Eagletons introduction to Literary Theory: An Introduction, which lucidly and briefly summarises the history of the question, what is literature? We may consider especially ideas of text which dispense with the requirement of literary merit or proven value. Eagleton 1-14.

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One must note again that Welleks reference in the above quote to a consciousness of unity in all literary production can be identified as political, Western or hegemonistic by scholars like Spivak. The function of comparative literature what it does seems very difficult to isolate without pinning oneself to one ideological position or the other. We may prefer Robert Weningers position that comparative literature is in many respects less a discipline than an inter-discipline or a trans-discipline, if not a meta-discipline or is it all three packaged into one? (Weninger xi) This discussion on how the scope of comparative literature may be one with its method, i.e., interdisciplinarity, leads into the final section of this assignment on the most relevant features of comparative literature today. I would suggest that relevance in this case lies in the eye of the public beholder the person asking the question in the epigraph. Comparative literatures definition, history and scope may be vehemently debated in academic circles, but its penetration into public consciousness is undeniable. Whether or not the general layperson knows of these debates, s/he must, through mass media and popular literature, be aware of the products of comparative literary studies for instance, comparisons of genre across cultures (how is epic and myth literature similar in Ancient Hindu and Greek cultures?); or thematic studies (partition and post-colonial literatures in the Global South are affectively drawn together now, in the public mind); or studies like womens writing, debates about translation, influence studies in colonial writing in India and other countries, etc. Comparative literature is relevant because it engages with differences it helps us identify them first (what makes a literature Indian or English, for instance?) and also makes a framework in which difference is not absolutely insuperable. It can be studied, categorized, even communicated across. I find Totosy de Zepetneks statement of this view (as his Ninth General Principle of Comparative Literature) very persuasive: On the one hand, the globalization is actively pursued and implemented. But on the other hand the forces

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of localization can be seen in the institutional parameters of Comparative Literature itself. Thus, the Ninth Principle represents the notion of working against the stream by promoting Comparative Literature as a global and inclusive discipline of international humanities with focus on literature. (de Zepetnek)

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Works Cited Bassnett, Susan. Reflections on Comparative Literature in the Twenty-First Century. Comparative Critical Studies 3.1-2 (2006): 3-11. Project Muse. Web. 10 February 2013. Berkeley, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, The Concept of Comparative Literature. Web. 15 February 2013. <http://complit.berkeley.edu/? page_id=81> de Zepetnek, Steven Totosy. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. Web. 5 February 2013. <http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/pub/totosy98/1.html> Eagleton, Terry. Introduction: What is Literature? Literary Theory: An Introduction. Minnesota: U of Minnesota Press, 2008. Print. Fletcher, John. The Criticism of Comparison: The Approach through Comparative Literature and Intellectual History. Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury & David Palmer. New York: Edward Arnold, 1970. Print. Friederich, Werner Paul. The Case of Comparative Literature. Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 31.2 (Summer 1945): 208-219. JSTOR. Web. 15 February 2013. Hernadi, Paul. What Isn't Comparative Literature? Profession (1986): 20-24. JSTOR. Web. 15 February 2013. Hutcheon, Linda. Afterword: Compl(ic)it. Comparative Critical Studies 3.1-2 (2006) 159-162. Project Muse. Web. 10 February 2013. Lopez, Alfred T. Introduction: Comparative Literature and the Return of the Global Repressed. The Global South 1.2 (Fall 2007): 1-15. JSTOR. Web. 15 February 2013.

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Weisstein, Ulrich. Comparative Literature and Literary Theory: Survey and Introduction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1974. Print. Wellek, Rene. Comparative Literature Today. Comparative Literature 17.4 (Autumn 1965): 325-337. JSTOR. Web. 15 February 2013. ---, Rene. The Name and Nature of Comparative Literature. Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. 1-36. Print. Weninger, Robert. Comparative Literature at a Crossroads? An Introduction. Comparative Critical Studies 3.1-2 (2006) xi-xix. Project Muse. Web. 10 February 2013. Ziolkowski, Jan M. Incomparable: The Destiny of Comparative Literature, Globalization or Not. The Global South 1.2 (Fall 2007): 16-44.