Name:- Hinaba D.Sarvaiya.
M.A. sem 4
Paper no:- Comparative Literature and Translation Studies
Roll no:- 09
Enrollment no:- 4069206420210032
Email ID:- hinabasarvaiya1711@gmail.com
Submitted by:- S.B.Gardi Department of English MKBU.
Batch:- 2021 to 2023
Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, Jadavpur University:-
About Author:-
Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, She is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, University of Delhi. Previously Professor at the Department of Comparative Litera- ture, Jadavpur University and Co-ordinator of the Special Assistance Programme of the department for several years where she undertook many projects in Comparative Literature and Translation. Was also editor of Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature from 2007-2012. She also taught at Tokyo Univer- sity of Foreign Studies. She was Secretary of Comparative Literature Association of India for two terms and also part of a Research Team on Mapping Multilingualism in World Literature of the International Comparative Literature Association. Has published in many journals. Books include A Bibliography of Reception: World Literature in Bengali Periodicals (1890-1900) and many edited volumes such as Liter- ary Studies in India: Genology and Of Asian Lunds an Annotated Bibliography of Travelogues to Asian Countries in Bangla.
Introduction:-
The essay gives an overview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in India. Focusing primarily 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 literature. The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore's speech or 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 overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Paradigms of approaches in comparative literary studies also shifted from influence and analogy studies to cross culture literary relations, to the focus on reception and transformation. In the last few years comparative Literature has taken on a new perspective, engaging with different areas of culture and knowledge. Particularly those related to marginalised species, along with the focus on recovering new areas of non hierarchical literary relations.
Key Argument:-
The Beginning:-
Contemporary literature as a discipline, there were texts focusing on comparative aspects of literature in India. The idea of world literature gained ground towards the end of the nineteenth century when in Bengal.
Satyendranath Dutta in 1904 stated "relationship of Joy" . Rabindranath Tagore entitled "Visvasahitya" means world literature,given at the National Council of Education in 1907, served as a pre-text to the establishment of the department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University in 1956, the same year in which the university started functioning. His idea is very complex to the tougher world literature. Buddhadeva Bose did not fully support the idealist vision of Tagore. Tagore's ideas of world literature that is one discipline.
Although in the early stages it was a matter of recognizing new aesthetic systems, new visions of the sublime and new ethical imperatives - the Greek drama and the Indian nataka - and then it was a question of linking social and historical structures with aesthetics in order to reveal the dialectic between them. 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. Greek and Sanskrit scholars were a part of the faculty and the ancient period did receive a lot of importance, as it still does today, for it is there that a field is offered to work out comparisons on quite a large scale, outside the domain of contact or relation.
The project did not "bring into existence a new object/subject of knowledge said by Radhakrishnan. But laying out the terms of comparison it did start a chain of reflections that would constitute the materiality of comparison, an ongoing series of engagement with multi dimensional reality of questions related to the self and other, to arrive at networks of relationships on various levels.
Indian literature as Comparative Literature:-
It was actually in the seventies that new perspectives related to pedagogy began to enter the field of Comparative Literature in Jadavpur. Indian literature entered the syllabus in a fairly substantial manner but not from the point of view of asserting national identity. It was rather an inevitable move-if compara- tive literature meant studying a text within a network of relations.
The Modern Indian Languages department established in. 1962 in Delhi University. In 1974, the department of Modern Indian Languages started a post-MA course entitled "Comparative Indian Literature". However, it was only in 1994 that an MA course in Comparative Indian Literature began in the department. As stated earlier the juxtaposition of different canons had led to the questioning of universalist canons right from the beginning of comparative studies in India and now with the focus shifting to Indian literature, and in some instances to literatures from the Southern part of the globe, one moved further away from subscribing to a priori questions related to cannon formation.
The focus on Indian literature within the discipline of comparative literature leads to opinion of many areas of engagement. Older definitions of Indian literature often with only Sanskrit at the centre with the focus on a few canonical texts to the neglect of others particularly oral and performative tradition head to be abundant.
Sisir Kumar Das is faculty member at the department of modern Indian languages and literary studies with support from other members of the department and the sahitya akadami. The department continues to develop teaching material on various aspects of Indian literature from a comparative perspective beginning from language,origins,manuscript, cultures.
T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of cryptocentrus body centric and phonocentric study of taxes in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the parliament to look for continuous intervention in the tradition that would again lead a plural list of epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture.
Centres of comparative literature studies:-
During the seventies and eighties comparative literature was also practised at a number of centres and departments in the south of India such as Trivandrum, Madurai Kamaraj University, Bharathidasan University, Kottayam and Pondicherry.
In 1986 a new full fledged department of comparative literature was established at Veer narmad South Gujarat University, Surat where focus was on Indian literature in western India.
Reconfiguration of areas of comparison:-
Questions of solidarity and desire to understand resistance to operations along with larger questions of epistemological cyst and strategies to breach gaps in history resulting from colonial interventions were often to structuring components of this area in the syllabus.
The beginning of discipline in India cross culture relations between Indian literature and European and American literature has been in focus. Reception studies also pointed to historical reality's determining conditions of acceptability and hence to complexions between literature and history.
Reception studies the focus gradually turned to cross culture receptions where reciprocity and exchange among cultures were studied. For example one tries to study the romantic moments from a larger perspective to unravel many layers that are travelled between countries particularly between Europe and India.
Research Directions:-
The department of English and comparative literary studies at Saurashtra University Rajkot took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the 19th century.
The department at Jadavpur University was upgraded under the programs to the status of centre of advanced studies in 2005 and research in comparative literature took a completely New turn. In favour of technology and the science and with decision makers in the realm of funding from higher education turning away from humanities in general.
The most important question for comparative literature in the area could be linked with the questions of dalit literature relationship with the menstream writing subverting questioning and at the same time also inflecting other discourses while continue to maintain its unique identity based to a large degree on performative to draw the reader in as the ethical witness to extreme limits of human suffering on which it is poised.
Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies:
All departments or centres of comparative literature today have courses on translation or translation studies. Both are seen as integral to study of comparative literature translation study covering different areas of inter literary studies history of translation may be used to map literary relations while analysis of acts of translation lead to understanding of important characteristics of both the source and the target literary and cultural systems.
The comparative cultural studies where key texts in the global field are juxtaposed with related text from the Indian context. The M Phil course on the subject at Jadavpur university highlights changing marginalities, subcultures and moments in the relationships to contemporary nationalism and globalisation and also sexualties, gender and politics of Identity.
Non Hierarchical Connectivity:-
Comparative literature in the country today has multi-fasted goals and visions in accordance with historical needs both local and planetary. And comparatists work with the knowledge that allowed remains to be done and that the task of construction of literary histories in terms of literary relations among neighbouring regions and of a large hole one of the primary tasks of comparative literature today has perhap yet to begin.
Work Citation:-
Ahmad, Aizaz "Indian Literature." Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso. 1992
Dasgupta, Subha Chakraborty. “Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of Its History.” Comparative Literature and World Literature , vol. 1, ser. 1, 2016, pp. 10–19. 1, https://doi.org/ http://www.cwliterature.org/uploadfile/2016/0711/20160711020042997.pdf.
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. "Visvasahitya." Rabindra-Rachanahali Vol. 10. Kolkata: WBSG 1987.324-333. Print.
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