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Felicia Tong
The third panel discussion
2007/07/26
Comparative Literature: Its Definition and Function
Henry H. H. Remak


Ⅰ. French school
1. Favor questions which can be solved on the basis of factual evidence (often involving personal documents)
2. Tend to exclude literary criticism from the domain of comparative literature.
3. Disagree with studies which “merely” compare, which “merely” point out analogies and contrasts.
* Carre and Guyard
(1) Influence studies as being too hazy, too uncertain and would have us concentrate on questions of reception, intermediaries, foreign travel, and attitudes toward a given country in the literature of another country during a certain period.
(2) Their disinclination toward large-scale syntheses in CL.
* Pichois-Rousseau (adjuster)
(1) We must have syntheses unless the study of literature wants to condemn itself to eternal fragmentation and isolation. Method: research in literature and make available meaningful conclusions to other disciplines, to the nation, and to the world at large.
American school
1. Americans scholars must guard against dismissing lightly certain topics (studies of reception, attitudes, intermediaries, travelers, Belesenheit) merely because the French seem to have favored them to the exclusion or neglect of other comparative subjects.
2. American curricula and publications in CL (including bibliographies) generally take in this realm, though they sometimes insist that the artists included belong to different nationalities.


Ⅱ. Remak’s comments about French school:
1. Van Tieghem, Guyard, Etiemble and Jeune do not discuss or even list the relationship between literature and other areas (art, music, philosophy, politics, etc.).
2. The French are certainly interested in such topics as the comparative arts, but they do not think of them as being within the jurisdiction of comparative literature.
3. The French desire for “securite” is detrimental to the unfolding of innovative topics and methods.
4. Influence studies may contribute less to the elucidation of the essence of a literary work than studies comparing authors, works, styles, tendencies, and literatures in which no influence can or it intended to be shown.
5. The name of our discipline is “comparative literature,” not “influential literature”
e.g. Thomas Mann and Gide, Balzac and Dickens, Moby Dick and Faust, etc.
6. French have been far less timid and doctrinaire in actual practice than in theory.
7. French seem to fear that the systematic study of the relationship between literature and any other area of human endeavor.


Ⅲ. Remak’s comments about comparative literature:
1. The lack of logical coherence between comparative literature as the study of literature beyond national boundaries and comparative literature as the study of the ramifications of literature beyond its own boundaries.
2. We conceive of comparative literature less as an independent subject which must at all costs set up its own inflexible laws, than as a badly needed auxiliary discipline a link between smaller segments of parochial literature, a bridge between organically related but physically separated areas of human creativeness.
3. Task: To give scholars, students, teachers, and readers, more comprehensive understanding of literature as a whole rather than of a departmental fragment or several isolated departmental fragments of literature; that is, by extending the investigation of literature both geographically and generically.


Ⅳ. Baldensperger Friederich’s Bibliography of Comparative Literature
Book 1 covering “Generalities,” “Thematology,” “Literary Genres” and book 3 “Literary Currents”
1. “Individual Motifs” and “Collective Motifs”
Motifs are part and parcel of literature; they are intrinsic, not extraneous.
2. “Literary Genres” and “Literary Current”
Accounts of literary genres, movements, and generations in a certain country, even if they are of a general nature, are not comparative per se. We submit that, everything in literary scholarship and criticism could lay claim to being “comparative literature.”
3. Interdisciplinary studies: only if they are systematic and if a definitely separable, coherent discipline outside of literature is studied as such.


Ⅴ. National literature & Comparative literature
1. 遇到需要處理複雜國籍問題時 (p10)
Most comparatists, while admitting complications and overlapping, will agree that these difficulties are neither frequent nor serious enough literature studied within and across national boundaries.
World literature & Comparative literature& General literature
CL: (1) comprise elements of space, time, quality, and intensity. (including space, frequently but not necessarily)
(2) often deals with the relationship of only two countries, or two authors of different nationalities, or one author and another country.
(3) at least in theory, may compare anything that is comparable no matter how old or how recent the work(s) may be.
(4) is not bound to the same extent by criteria of quality and/or intensity.
(5) could be done on second-rate authors, often more representative of the time-bound features of their age than the great writers.
(6) certain first-rate writers ont yet acclaimed by world literature are eminently fitted for CL.
(7) occidental →oriental
(8) requires that a work, author, trend, or theme be actually compared with a work, author, trend, or theme of another country or sphere; but a collection of essays.
(9) does not have to be comparative on every page nor even in every chapter, but the overall intent, emphasis, and execution must be comparative.
* “American” concept of CL embraces inquiries into the relationship between literature and other orbits; WL does not.
* “French” definition of CL specifies a method, WL does not.
WL: (1) As a rule, the acquisition of world renown takes time, and “world literature” usually deals with literature consecrated as great by the test of time.
(2) deals therefore predominantly with time-and world-honored literary productions of enduring quality, or less markedly, with authors of our own day who have enjoyed very intense applause abroad.
(3) Many anthologies of masterpieces form various countries usually are designated by the term “World literature” rather than “comparative literature.”
GL: (1) has been used for courses and publications concerned with foreign literature in English translation, and appears to be of interest to students outside one national literature.
(2) Sometimes it refers to literary trends, problems, and theories of “general” interest, or to aesthetics.
(3) Collections of texts and of critical studies or comments dealing with several literatures have been assigned to this category.
(4) Like WL, CL fails to prescribe a comparative method of approach.
* Paul Van Tieghem
NL: (1) treats questions confined to one national literature
(2) would be the study of literature within walls
CL: (1) deals with problems involving two different literatures
(2) across walls
GL: (1)is devoted to developments in a larger number of countries making up organic units.
(2) above walls


Ⅵ. Points
1. Less theory, more practice. The tite truth is that we need theory and practice simultaneously. Theory must constantly be monitored and modified by practice, anc vice versa.
2. The East still is more historically and ideologically oriented than the West, and European continental (including French) usage in comparative literature still leans more toward history than American pratcite.
3. Methods: It is up to the individual scholar to show that the approach chosen for a particular literary object or subject is appropriate.
4. CL does not have special problems which require special competences and special combinations of methods. CL does not have, or need to have, a methodology exclusive to itself. 


Ⅶ. Consensus
Both American and French schools subscribe to this portion of our definition, viz. comparative literature as the the study of literature beyond national boundaries


Ⅷ. Selective Bibliography
1 Surveys of CL as a Discipline (p26-31)
2 Studies on Basic Aspects of the Definifion and Function of CL (p32-46)
3 Comprehensive International Histories of Literature and Criticism (p46-48)
4 Comparative Chronological Tables (p49)
5 Bibliographies of CL (p49-50)
6 Periodicals (p50-52)
7 Other Useful Reference Works (p52-57)