Dead, or a Picture of Good Health? Comparatism, Europe, and World Literature

Abstract

HAS RECENTLY STOPPED to look at literary historiography will have noticed that certain notions like European literature or world literature have returned to the forefront. It is not just that we are seeing the successive publication of a large number of histories devoted to European literature and the resurgence in academia of the debate over the meaning of world literature.2 Both of these circumstances are apparent, however outdated or phantasmagoric they may seem nowadays. But more importantly beyond the opportunity for or genuine interest in this revival it is impossible to ignore that we are talking about concepts myths, if you like crucial to the idea of comparative literature itself. Comparatism was created as a practice and project stemming from these guiding principles, which were more effective the more vague and imprecise they were. Therefore, each time these old concepts are taken up again, it is comparatism as such that is questioned. For neither Europe nor the world is what it once was.