Comparative Literature: Introduction
(Notes from the graduate seminar: Comparative Methodology, with professor Patrick McGlynn)
Week 1
When we study Sir Thomas Wyatt’s translation of Petrarch’s «Una candida cerva», it’s natural to compare it with Petrarch’s sonnet. We can also compare with the deer poem in Song of Songs. Because Wyatt’s has read and was influenced by the metaphors and expressions in Songs of Songs. Here, we can argue for genetic lines of commonality. But can we compare it to any poem with a deer in it?
"Although thematics, or subject matter, is the starting point of many an investigation, it is never enough simply to discover the same themes appearing in different." (Saussy 13-14)
Axioms of Comparative Literature:
Paradoxes of comparison
The Nature of the Literary
Literature is pure culture.
Eoyang is trying to say that literature is related to that cognitive process by which we endow activity and experience with meaning. (Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning)
Literature registers those deep cognitive process that defines us as an individual. Literature is not just a tradition, it’s the taproot of our cognition.
Week 1
When we study Sir Thomas Wyatt’s translation of Petrarch’s «Una candida cerva», it’s natural to compare it with Petrarch’s sonnet. We can also compare with the deer poem in Song of Songs. Because Wyatt’s has read and was influenced by the metaphors and expressions in Songs of Songs. Here, we can argue for genetic lines of commonality. But can we compare it to any poem with a deer in it?
- How do we justify comparing 2 things?
- If we compare unlike things, is it still comparative literature? Does comparative literature assume likeness? Is contrast comparison?
- What is the subject matter of Comparative literature? It’s more a way of thinking...
- What is the definition of comparative literature?
- “the systematic study of supranational assemblages" (Guillén 3)
- Jost
- Aldridge
- Damrosche
- Saussy
- A method...(Croce)
- Comparative Literature is an anxiogenic. (Rowe)
- Hypothesis: Comparative Literature is a multi-perspective way of seeing and being that implies trans-cultural, trans-disciplinary moral and social values.
Axioms of Comparative Literature:
- Work in the original language;
- Know at least 3 languages;
- See patterns emerge, create theories from therefrom (inductive method);
- Master each field (no dabbling).
Paradoxes of comparison
The Nature of the Literary
Eugene Eoyang, “The Promise and Premise of Creativity: Why Comparative Literature Matters”
Eoyang is trying to say that literature is related to that cognitive process by which we endow activity and experience with meaning. (Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning)
Literature registers those deep cognitive process that defines us as an individual. Literature is not just a tradition, it’s the taproot of our cognition.
Transcribed on Mar. 18, 2019.
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