Hello Everyone,
I am Hinaba Sarvaiya, a student of the English department at MKBU. This blog is my part of Thinking Activities assigned by our prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog based on paper 208: Comparative Literature and Translation Studies. And here I am discussing the article " Introduction: What is Comparative Literature Today?" by Susan Bassnett.
Abstract:-
Comparative Literature accepted as a most advantageous approach for literary and cultural studies can probably contribute much more than the other disciplines to cultural studies and cultural history, even feminist cultural history, comparative cultural perspectives to literature; and or cultural studies open a large umbrella for international cultures and literatures in the light of these two works focused on literary writings, experiments.
Key Argument:-
-What is the object of the study in comparative literature?
-How can comparison be the objective of anything?
-If individual literature has cannon, what might a comparative cannot be?
-How can becomparist select what to compare?
-Is comparative literature a discipline or is it simply a field of study?
Comparative literature Involves the study of texts across cultures that are interdisciplinary and that is concerned with patterns of connection in Literature across both time and space.
Matthew Arnold in his inaugural lecture at Oxford in 1857 when he said;
"Everywhere there is connection, everywhere there is illustration, no single events. no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relations to other events, to other literatures".
One could be forgiven for assuming that comparative literature is nothing more than common sense, an inevitable state in reading, made increasingly easier by international marketing of books and by the availability of translations. But if we shift perspective slightly and look again at the term comparative literature, what we find instead is a history of violent debate that goes right back to the earliest usage of the term at the beginning of the 19th century and continues still today.
Comparative literature as a term seems to arouse strong patience both for the against. As early 1903 Benedetto Croce argued that comparative literature was a non-subject, contemptuously
dismissing the suggestions that it might be seen as a separate discipline. He discussed the definition of comparative literature as the exploration of "The vicissitudes,alterations, developments and reciprocal differences of themes and literary Ideas across literatures, and concluded that 'there is no study more or read that research of this sort'.
Croce's argument was that the term 'Comparative literature' was obfuscatory, disguising the obvious, that is, the fact that the true object of study was literary history. Cross claimed he could not distinguish between literary history pure, simple and comparative literary history. The term comparative literature he maintained, had no substance to it.
Charles Mills Gayley, claimed for comparative literature and proclaim in the same year as a croce's attack that the working premise of the student of comparative literature was:
"Literature as a distinct and integral medium of thought, a common institutional expression of humanity, differentiated, to be sure, by the social conditions of the individual, by racial, historical, cultural and linguistic influences, opportunities and restrictions, but irrespective of age or guise, prompted by the common needs and aspirations of man, sprung from common faculties, psychological and obeying common laws of material and mode, of the individual and social humanity.
Warren and Wellek go on to state that "literature is one as art and humanity are one". Wellek was already talking about the crisis in comparative literature and even as the subject appeared to be gaining ground in the 1960s and early 1970 flows in the idea of universal values and of literature as one could already see.
Comparative literature is beginning to gain ground in the rest of the world. New programmes in comparative literature began to emerge in China, in Taiwan, in Japan and other Asian countries, based however not only on any ideal of universalism but on the very aspect of literary study that many Western comparatists had sought to deny the specificity of national literature.
Ganesh Devi goes further and suggests that comparative literature in India is directly linked to the rise of modern Indian nationalism, noting that comparative literature has been used to assert the national cultural identity.
Homi Bhabha sums up the new emphasis in an essay discussing the ambivalence of postcolonial culture suggesting that, instead of cross referencing, that is an effective product in cross cutting across sites of social significance, that erases the dialectical, disciplinary sense of cultural reference and relevance.
Eagleton's explanation of the rise of English in with the aspirations of many of the early comparatists for a subject that would transcend cultural boundaries and unite the human race through the civilizing power of great literature. That's why comparative literature has been called into question by the emergence of alternative schools of thought.
The growth of national consciousness and awareness of the need to move on the colonial legacy has led significantly to the development of comparative literature in many parts of the world even as the subject enters a period of crisis and decay in the west. The way in which comparative literature is used in place search as China, Brazil , India or many African Nations is constructive in that it is employed to explore both indigenou traditions and imported traditions, throwing open the whole vexed of the problems of the canon. What is being studied is a way in which national culture has been affected by important sons and the focus on that National culture.
Ganesh Devi argument that comparative literature in India considered with the rise of modern Indian nationalism is important because it serves to remind us of the origins of the term comparative literature in Europe, a term that first appeared in an age of national struggles,when new boundaries were being erected and whole questions of national culture and national identity was under discussion include the following phrase the term postcolonial is most appropriate as the term for the new cross culture criticism which has merged in recent years.
Comparative literature is translation studies:-
The future of comparative literature is translation study. since the early usage of this term in the mid 1970s. What distinguishes translation studies from translation as traditionally thought of, it is derivation from the polysystems theory developed by Itamar Evan Zohar and letter by Gideon Toury in Tel Aviv.
Comparative literature has traditionally claimed translation as a sub-category but this assumption is now being questioned. Comparative literature has always claimed translation as a sub category but as translation study establish is itself firmly as a subject based in inter-cultural study and offering a methodology of some rigoir, both in terms of theoretical and descriptive works, so comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else.
In this full article explanation see in this YouTube video. This Article is explained by Janvi Nakum and Nidhi Dave, students of the English department MKBU.
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