Name : Pina Gondaliya
Paper Name: Comparative Literature and Translation Studies.
Topic: Fanonism and Constructive Violence in Petals of Blood
Roll No. : 18
Enrollment No.: 4069206420210001
Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History.
By : Subha Chakraborty
Introduction :
The essay gives an overview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in India, focusing pri-marilyn on the department at Jadavpur University, where it began, and to some extent the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies in the University of Delhi, where it later had a new beginning in its engagement with Indian literatures. The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore’s speech on World Literature and with a modern poet-translator as its founder. While British legacies in the study of literature were evident in the early years, there were also subtle efforts towards a decolonizing process and an overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Gradually Indian literature began to receive prominence along with literature from the Southern part of the globe. Paradigms of approaches in comparative literary studies also shifted from influence and analogy studies to cross-cultural literary relations, to the focus on reception and transformation. In the last few years Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives, engaging with different areas of culture and knowledge, particularly those related to marginalized spaces, along with the focus on recovering new areas of non-hierarchical literary relations.
Table Content
Key Points
Decolonizing process
Creativity
Cross-cultural literary relations
Interdisciplinary
👉 The Beginning
Long before the establishment of Comparative Literature as a discipline, there were texts focusing on comparative aspects of literature in India, both from the point of view of its relation with literatures from other parts of the world particularly Persian, Arabic and English and from the perspective of inter-Indian literary studies, the multilingual context facilitating a seamless journey from and between literatures written in different languages.
Buddhadeva Bose, one of the prime architects of modern Bengali poetry, did not fully subscribe to the idealist visions of Tagore, for he be-lived it was necessary to break away from Tagore to be a part of the times, of modernity, but he too directly quoted from Rabindranath’s talk on “visva sahitya” while writing about the discipline, interpreting it more in the context of establishing connections, of ‘knowing’ literatures of the world. Bose, also well-known for his translations of Baudelaire, Hoelderlin and Kalidasa, wrote in his preface to the translation of Les Fleurs du Mal that his intention in turning to French poetry was to move away from the literature of the British, the colonial masters, while in his introduction to the translation of Kalidasa’s Meghdutam.
Sudhindranath Dutta, also well-known for his translation of Mallarmé and his erudition both in the Indian and the Western context, to teach in the department of Comparative Literature. Of the first five students in the department, three became well-known poets and the fourth a fine critic of Bengali poetry.
The first syllabus offered by the department in 1956 was quite challenging. There was a considerable section of Sanskrit literature along with Greek and Latin literature and then Bengali, its relation with Sanskrit literature and its general trajectory, and then a large section of European literature from the ancient to the modern period.
Indian Literature as a Comparative Literature
It was actually in the seventies that new perspectives related to pedagogy began to enter the field of Comparative Literature in Jadavpur. In 1974, the department of Modern Indian Languages Started a post-MA course entitled “Comparative Indian Literature”. A national seminar on Comparative Literature was held in Delhi University organized by Nagendra, a writer-critic who taught in the Hindi department of Delhi University and a volume entitled Comparative Literature was published in 1977. However, it was only in 1994 that an MA course in Comparative Indian Literature began in the department.
The task, comparatists realized was, as so aptly voiced by Aijaz Ahmad, to trace “the dialectic of unity and difference – through systematic periodization of multiple linguistic overlaps, and by grounding that dialectic in the history of material productions, ideological struggles, competing conceptions of class and community and gender, elite offensives and popular resistances, overlaps of cultural vocabular-ies and performative genres, and histories of orality and writing and print” (Ahmad 265). Dealing with Indian literature from a comparative perspective also meant looking at the interactions taking place with literatures in regions beyond the geo-political
boundaries of the nation state. All this would necessarily take up a long period of time. The beginning of the process was seen in the comprehensive and integrative three-volume histories of Indian literature, where Indian literatures were studied not as discrete units but in dialogue with one another, brought out by Sisir Kumar Das, a faculty member at the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, with support from other members of the department and the Sahitya Akademi.
Centers of Comparative Literature Studies
During the seventies and the eighties Comparative Literature was also practiced at a number of centers and departments in the South of India such as in Trivandrum, Madurai Kamaraj University, Bharathidasan University, Kottayam and Pondicherry. Although often Comparative Literature courses were held along with English literature, a full-fledged Comparative Literary Studies department was established in the School of Tamil Studies in Madurai Kamaraj University. A reputed poet, author and critic, K. Ayappa Paniker, from Kerala, must also be mentioned while talking about the south for his work in the area, particularly that related to comparisons of literary theory, and for his book on the narrative traditions of India.3In Tamil, apart from studies related to the comparison of texts from two different cultures, Classical Tamil texts were compared with texts from the Greek, Latin and Japanese counterpart traditions. Later in the eighties and the nineties other Centres were established in different parts of the country, either as independent bodies or within a single language department as in Punjabi University, Patiala, Dibrugarh University, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Sambalpur University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. In 1986 a new full-fledged department of Comparative Literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, where focus was on Indian literatures in Western India.
Centers of Comparative Literature Studies
Comparative Literature courses were held along with English literature, and a full-fledged Comparative Literary Studies department was established in the School of Tamil Studies in Madurai Kamaraj University. A reputed poet, author and critic, K. Ayappa Paniker, from Kerala, must also be mentioned while talking about the south for his work in the area, particularly that related to comparisons of literary theory, and for his book on the narrative traditions of India. In Tamil, apart from studies related to the comparison of texts from two different cultures, Classical Tamil texts were compared with texts from the Greek, Latin and Japanese counterpart traditions. Later in the eighties and the nineties other Centres were established in different parts of the country, either as independent bodies or within a single language department as in Punjabi University, Patiala, Dibrugarh University, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Sambalpur University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. In 1986 a new full-fledged department of Comparative Literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, where focus was on Indian literatures in Western India. Also in 1999 a department of Dravidian Comparative Literature and Philosophy was established in Dravidian University, Kuppam.
Jadavpur called Indian Comparative Literature Association and the other in Delhi named Comparative Indian Literature Association. The two merged in 1992 and the Comparative Literature Association of India was formed, which today has more than a thousand members. In the early years of the Association, a large number of creative writers participated in its conferences along with academics and researchers, each enriching the horizon of vision of the other.
Reconfiguration of areas of comparison
The eighties again saw changes and reconfigurations of areas of comparison at Jadavpur University. In the last years of the seventies, along with Indian literatures, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude became a part of the syllabus with a few other texts from Latin American Literatures and then Literatures from African countries were included. An Area Studies component to study the literature of Pakistan has also been designed. As for the other Area Studies components, the department today hosts Centers for African, Latin American and Canadian studies where some research work and annual seminars are organized. A few, like the pres-ent author, are of the opinion that given the relatively small number of faculty in the department, the Area Studies programmes led to a division of the scarce resources and also diverted attention from some of the key challenges in comparative literature studies in India, namely, the systematic amalgamation of data related to the Indian context and its analysis from comparative perspectives, and also perhaps the mapping of intercultural relations with and among India’s neighboring countries. Components from the diverse Area Studies could possibly have been included as integrated parts of the main curriculum.
Reception Studies
Right from the beginning of the discipline in India, cross-cultural relations between Indian literature and European and American literature had been in focus. There was again a shift during this period as the term “influence” began to be questioned by several scholars and particularly so in colonized countries where there was a tendency to look for influences even when they were non-existent. In several articles as well, one on the reception of the novel in Bengal for instance, the receiver and not the emitter was in focus. This also implied that the receiver was taking elements from another culture in accordance with her own needs or the needs of the system, while the foreign elements underwent a transformation in accordance with forms, elements and ideologies in operation in the system at any given moment. So it was not a question of a dominating culture imposing its literature on another. Reception studies also pointed to historical realities determining conditions of acceptability and hence to complex configurations between literature and history. To give an instance, it seemed that romanticism of a particular kind had an easy access into the realm of Bengali literature, but it was a romanticism that did not accept many of the European elements. Burns and Wordsworth were very popular and it was felt that their romanticism was marked by an inner strength and serenity.
Research direction
The Department of Assamese in Dibrugarh University received the grant and published a number of books related to translations, collections of rare texts and documentation of folk forms. The department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University also received assistance to pursue research in four major areas, East-West Literary Relations, Indian Literature, Translation Studies and Third World Literature. Incidentally, the department had in Manabendra Bandyopadhyay, an avid translator who translated texts from many so-called “third-world countries”. Conferences were held and research material published in all four areas. In the next phase support was given for publishing text-books in the area and for preparing an infrastructure for the study of Indian literature. This led to the publication of three texts on genres, themes and literary historiography in the Indian context. The department at Jadavpur University was upgraded under the programme to the status of Centre of Advanced Studies in 2005, and research in Comparative Literature took a completely new turn. The need to foreground the relevance of studying literature was becoming more and more urgent in the face of a society that was all in favor of technology and the sciences and with decision makers in the realm of funding for higher education turning away from the humanities in general. The task for departments of humanities and literature was to demonstrate that they were looking into and working with a knowledge system just as any other discipline, only literature’s ways of knowing were different.
A project on the interface between Perso-Arabic and South Asian literatures was also planned and a number of lectures delivered in the area. Earlier, under a different grant, the tradition of Bhakti and Sufi were studied together and a volume was published. Visiting Professors were invited to give several lectures on Japanese and South Korean literature. A one-day colloquium on Kolkata’s Chinese connections was held in collaboration with the H.P. Biswas India-China Cultural Studies Centre of Jadavpur University and a seminar on framing intercultural studies between India and China was held with the Centre and the department of International Relations, Jadavpur University.
Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies
Comparative Literature’s relationship with Translation Studies was not a new phenomenon for one or two departments or centers, such as the one in Hyderabad University, which was involved in doing translation studies for a considerable period. Today the university has a full-fledged Centre for Comparative Literature offering courses, and research in Translation Studies is an important area. Almost all departments or centers of Comparative Literature today have courses on Translation or Translation Studies. Both are seen as integral to the study of Comparative Literature. Translation Studies cover different areas of inter literary studies.As for Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature has always engaged with different aspects of Cultural Studies, the most prominent being literature and its relation with the different arts. Today studies in intermediality in Comparative Literature are common. But beyond such studies courses in Comparative Literature also offer modules on Comparative Cultural Studies where key texts in the global field are juxtaposed with related texts from the Indian context. The M Phil course on the subject at Jadavpur University highlights changing marginalities, ‘subcultures’ and movements in relation to contemporary nationalisms and globalization, and also sexualities, gender and the politics of identity
In some of the new centers of Comparative Literature that came up in the new universities es-tablished in the last Five Year Plan, diaspora studies were taken up as an important area of engagement. It must be mentioned though that despite tendencies towards greater interdisciplinary approaches, literature continues to occupy the central space in Comparative Literature and it is believed that intermedial studies may be integrated into the literary space.
Conclusion
Non-hierarchical connectivity
It is evident that Comparative Literature in the country today has multifaceted goals and visions in accordance with historical needs, both local and planetary. Several University departments today offer Comparative Literature separately at the M Phil level, while many others have courses in the discipline along with single literatures. As in the case of humanities and literary studies, the discipline too is engaged with issues that would lead to the enhancement of civilizational gestures, against forces that are divisive and that constantly reduce the potentials of human beings. In doing so it is engaged in discovering new links and lines of non-hierarchical connectivity, of what Kumkum Sangari in a recent article called “co-construction”, a process anchored in “subtle and complex histories of translation, circulation and extraction” (Sangari 50). And comparatists work with the knowledge that a lot remains to be done and that the task of the construction of literary histories, in terms of literary relations among neighboring regions, and of larger wholes, one of the primary tasks of Comparative Literature today has perhaps yet to begin. In all its endeavors, however, the primary aim of some of the early architects of the discipline to nurture and foster creativity continues as a subterranean force.
Citation
Ahmad, Aizaz. “Indian Literature.” Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso. 1992.
243-285. Print.
Dasgupta, Subha Chakraborty. "Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History." Comparative Literature & World Literature Spring 2016.
Datta, Satyendranath. “Samapti.” Satyendranath Kabyagrantha. Ed. Aloke Ray. Kolkata: Sahitya Samsad. 1984. Print.
R. Radhakrishnan. “Why compare?” New Literary History 40.3, Summer (2009): 453-71. Print.
Sangari, Kumkum. “Aesthetics of Circulation: Thinking Between Regions.” Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature XLVX (2013-14):9-38. Print.
Tagore, Rabindranath. “Visva Sahitya.” Rabindra-Rachanabali Vol. 10. Kolkata: WBSG 1987. 324-333. Print.
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