Thinking Activity Unit 2 : Comparative Literature

 Hello Readers 👋 

Welcome to my blog. In our syllabus of M.A. part-1 we had one paper on Contemporary literature and Translation Studies. In this paper we had a lots of articles. Dilip Barad assigned us this article in Group presentations Task as well as Thinking Activity task. 

What is Comparative  Literature Today ? -Susan Bassnett 

Abstract 

Sooner or later, anyone who claims to be working in comparative literature has to try and answer the inevitable question : What is it ? The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across  both time and space. Susan Bassnett gives a critical understanding of Comparative literature. She says that there is no particular object for studying comparative literature. Another thing is, we cannot give a definite term for comparative literature. Different authors of literature give various perspectives about comparative literature.The popular understanding of comparative literature means different cultures across the world, expressed in the history of literature.

Key Arguments 

Critics at the end of the twentieth century,in the age of postmodernism,still wrestle with the same questions that were posed more than a century ago:
“What is the object of the study in comparative literature? How can comparison be the objective of anything? If individual literatures have canon,what might a comparative canon be? How can be comparatist select what to compare ?Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study ?” Susan Bassnett argues that there are different terms used by different scholars for comparative literature studies. Therefore, we cannot put in a single compartment for comparative literature.
The second thing she argues is that the west students of 1960 claimed that comparative literature could be put in single boundaries for comparative literature study, but she says that there is no particular method used for claiming.

Key Points 

• The methodology of comparative literature
• Dynamic shifts in comparative literature
• Crisis of comparative literature in the postmodern literature field

Analysis 

The comparative literature has been developed through the progress of the world and through various cultures of different continents. A different cultures of the continents have played a vital role in comparative literature studies, be it European, African, American and Eastern so on.

Matthew Arnold in his Inaugural lecture at Oxford in 1857 when he said :“Everywhere there is connection, everywhere there is illustration. No single event,no single literature is adequately comprehend except  in relation to other events,to other literature.”Goethe termed Weltliteratur.Goethe noted that he liked to “keep informed about foreign productions’ and advised anyone else to do the same.It is becoming more and more obvious to me,”he remarked, “that poetry is the common property of all mankind.”Benedetto Croce argued that comparative literature was a non-subject,contemptuously dismissing the suggestion that it might be seen as separate discipline.Wellek and Warren in their Theory of Literature, a book that was enormously significant in comparative literature when it first appeared in 1949,suggest that :“Comparative Literature …will make high demands on the linguistic proficiencies of our scholars.It asks for a widening of perspectives a suppression of local and provincial sentiments,not easy to achieve.”

Conclusion 

The comparative literature could not be brought under one umbrella unless it becomes a particular branch of the discipline of literature. There are a lot of efforts are being taken to study comparative literature through a common language that is done in translation, which is understood by all people.

Comparative Literature has traditionally claimed translation as a sub-category,but this assumption in now being questioned.The work of scholars such as Toury,Lefevere,Hermans,Lembert and many others has shown that translation is especially at moments of great cultural changes.

Evan Zohar argued that extensive translation activity takes place when a culture is in a period of translation :when it is expanding,when it needs renewal,when it isin a pre-revolutionary phase,then translation plays a vital part.  Comparative Literature have always claimed that translation as a sub-category,but as translation studies establishes itself firmly as a subject based in inter-cultural study and offering a methodology of some rigour, both in terms of theoretical and descriptive work, so comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else.

Seenin this way, the problem of the crisis could then be put into perspective,and the long,unresolved debate on whether comparative literature is or is not a discipline i  its own right could finally and definitely be shelved.

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