Comparative Literature
By Mustafa Albana
The branch of literary history that deals with literary relationships, similarities, and distinctions among different countries. Similarities between works of literature mayb based on similarities in the social and cultural development of the respectivecountries of origin or on cultural and literary contacts between the countries.Consequently, there are two areas Of
comparative literary studies: typologicalliterary analogies and literary relationships and
influences. Although these areas interact with one another, they should not be confused.
Comparative literature postulates a unity in man’s social and historicaldevelopment. Since similar social relations have existed among different peoples,historical and typological analogies may be observed in the development ofdifferent literatures during a single historical epoch. Comparative literature maytherefore study single literary works, literary genres and styles, the work ofindividual writers, or literary trends. Thus, during the Middle Ages, the folk heroicepos of different peoples of the East and West reveals similarities. During theperiod of feudalism, similarities existed among the chivalric lyrics of Provençaltroubadours and German minnesingers, early classical Arabic love poetry, theversified chivalric romance in the West, and the romantic epic in eastern literatures.
An orderly succession of literary trends may be observed in the bourgeoisliteratures of different European countries: Renaissance literature, the baroque,classicism, romanticism, critical realism and naturalism, symbolism, modernism, and new forms of realism.
Although similar literary developments take place among different peoples, mutualcontacts and influences are also common and generally accompany such developments. However, a prerequisite for a literary influence is an inner need forsuch a cultural “import” and an analogous social and literary course ofdevelopment. A. N. Veselovskii wrote of “crosscurrents” in borrowed literature.According to his theory, every borrowed work becomes partially transformed, oradapted, to correspond with the national development and literary traditions of thecountry adopting the work. The adaptation is also influenced by the ideology andliterary approach of the writer making use of the borrowed work. For comparativeliterature, such differences between works are as important as similarities.
Mutual literary influences among countries are not limited to contemporary literature. The literary heritage of great writers of the past continues to influence thepresent. An example is the influence of ancient Greek and Roman literature duringthe Renaissance and the period of 17th-and 18th-century classicism. Anassociated subject of study is that of the influence of various
writers in different epochs and countries.
Examples are the influence of Shakespeare and Goethe inFrance, Great Britain, and Russia and that of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Gorky in world literature.
This field of study also involves the history of translations as well as of literary criticism, which reflects the development of social and literary thought in a given country.Literary relationships and influences between countries differ in intensity and form under different historical conditions.
Definitions of Comparative Literature, mostly examined the exchanges and the links between the dominant European literatures. Then, in the aftermath of World War I, literary studies became more committed to national cultures and occasionally civilizations, such as British, French and North-American cultures. Following World War II, Comparative Literature went on to devote itself to the history of international literary relations, although these relations remained closely aligned with the Western literary canon.
While comparatists in the post-war period prided themselves in being able to speak several languages, there was a marked tendency to specialise in dominant European languages, which left Comparative Studies open to the accusation of maintaining a Eurocentric bias. Today these parameters have changed: the notion of a clearly defined and exclusive literary canon has been challenged and literature is less tightly bound to spatially-defined traditions. Now that we all live in a more global arena, and in an age of increasing cultural contact between different language cultures, the study of Comparative literature is more relevant than ever. This is particularly the case in 21 st -century Ireland, which has evolved into an ever more complex and diverse multicultural society. In “Comparative Literature, World Literature and Indian Literature: Concepts and Models,” Harish Trivedi talks extensively about the Winternitz model of Indian Literature which is based solely on Sanskrit Literature and diminishes the significance of literatures written in the modern Indian languages. This representation ties in nicely with Das’s point about the hegemonic structure in the representation of Indian Literature. In this essay the reader encounters various models of World Literature by David Damrosch, Franco Moretti and Vilashini Cooppan. These definitions also brings out the tokenization of classics by tying bits of them up with popular fiction: an extract from Gilgamesh quoted in Star Trek, excerpts from Mahabharata in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children(1980). Harish Trivedi asserts that this is not World Literature but just a “dumbing down” of classics to serve the purpose of a “desperately beseeching presentism” (24). Sujit Mukherjee’s models of Comparative Literature, the ‘Hindustani’ and ‘Bharatiya’ which were essentially Nationalistic were challenged by the integrationist model proposed by Sisir K. Das. In the end, Sheldon Pollock’s Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (2003) is deemed the finest endeavour conceived out of post-structuralist study. Thus the models provided by Das and Pollock emerge as two divergent models of the history of Indian Literature.
The definitions in this section thus talk about the shifting paradigms of Comparative Literature as a discipline, one that tries to incorporate the literary, cultural and political aspects. Ramakrishnan is seen to agree with the model of Comparative Literature proposed by Gayatri Spivak which demands a shift from the global, which tends to homogenise the planetary, a system that truly liberates the disciplines by offering visions of alterity. One may say that the introductory essay written by Ramakrishnan is truly a condensed form of his vision of Comparative Literature, not unlike the structure of the book itself; Interdisciplinary is a tapestry woven out of the various threads and opinions of comparatists and literary scholars, of past and present.
The definitions state that the second section of “World Literature and Comparative Literature: A Dialogue” begins with the predicament of Comparative Literature which needs to be redefined in the manner suggested by Spivak if it is to survive. The vague universalism in the idea of World Literature as expressed by Goethe and Rabindranath Tagore is discussed in this section. In T.S. Satyanath’s essay “World Literature in the context of Indian Literatures,” it transpires that Tagore’s model of World Literature (‘Viswa Sahitya’) accommodates the Comparative Literature component of universalism which fits in nicely with the concept of cosmopolitanism (‘Viswa-manava’).
In the first essay “Literary History in a Global Age: The Legacy of Sisir Kumar Das,” David Damrosch concludes that the history proposed by Das twenty years ago and also the recent progressive anti-Eurocentric models of literary history are still inflected in their deep structure by European norms. P.P. Raveendranin, in his essay “Literature as Supermarket: Mapping World Literature Today,” brings out the dilemma faced by World Literature as a discipline paradoxically self-situated in an international culture yet also threatened by oppositional works derived from marginalized cultures. The essay “The Subaltern Can Speak: Letters from the Trenches and Across the Black Waters” by Dorothy Figueira speaks extensively on the different ways to interpret cross-cultural encounters. She compares the letters written by Indian soldiers stationed in Belgium and France during the First World War with the fictional narrative depicting their experiences in Mulk Raj Anand’s novel Across the Black Waters (1939). The Indian soldiers portrayed in the novel are mute victimized entities who are awaiting their inevitable fate; however, in the real letters, one can discern a constant flow of progressive thinking and lively spirits in these soldiers. They were open to new experiences and did not face a crisis of faith as portrayed by Anand in his novel written two decades later. The sepoys’ letters even suggest that there can be cross-cultural understanding even if there are quite a few challenges. Figueira explains that this major difference in the portrayal of the soldiers is because of the influence of the Thirties Movement. The idea expounded in this movement was that the individual is powerless and incapable of offering anything other than mute resistance to a system until he is able to revolt against it.
One can infer that hermeneutic consciousness also comes into play in the colonial reshaping and framing of some of the ancient manuscripts of India, as explained in the subsequent sections of this book. The third section brings out the construction of a canon in relation to the figure of Rabindranath Tagore. In “Tagore as World Literature” Amiya Dev relies on what literary luminaries like Jibanananda Das and Buddhadeva Bose have said about the centripetal pull exerted by Tagore with respect to Bengali Literature. This section helps to bring out Tagore as the Bengali: the Indian and the universalist. In the first essay, Balaji Ranganathan explores the problems of Orientalist Representation with respect to Gita Govinda. The organic hybridity of the composite art form found in the text is subjected to the gaze of an Orientalist and his representation suffers from exotification of objects and the use of overt rationality which characterizes the period of Enlightenment. The glory of Indian Art has been portrayed as a thing of the past as is clearly discernible in the statements made by William Jones, where he remarks that the art which flourished in ancient India had faded “for the want of due culture” (186). The same goes for translations of Manusamhita, as Piyali Sen Ghosh points out in her essay. Thus from the time in which Jones was writing to the present day.
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