Editor's Column: Comparative Literature and Canonicity

Abstract

??? COHPAnATIST EDITOR'S COLUMN: COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND CANONICITY What did comparatists really think when their colleagues in the national literatures began debating, critiquing, or defending "the canon"? Their reaction was probably deeply ambivalent, unless the term was modified by adjectives like "English," "Western," or "Greek and Latin classical," to name only the literary canons most often invoked in the United States in recent decades. More than most scholars, comparatists are likely to recognize the multitude ofpossible canons and their dependence on the specific frames of reference of a given scholarly or educational context. Thus, at the onset ofthe canon debates, when Herbert Lindenberger argued for the "normality ofcanon change" in the mid-1980s, he began with a contemporary example from the United States, then turned to nineteenth -century Germany and to Hellenistic times. Or, in a review essay in this issue that presents another such example, Eugene Eoyang traces the shift in focus since the 1970s in American studies of Chinese literature , from the traditional classical canon to an emerging modern one. In a similar spirit we might consider a recent flurry ofprotest against a new EngUsh curriculum at a Washington-area university, with an eye to some ofits implications for comparative literature. Certainly the elimination ofrequired courses in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton points up major changes in the nature of English studies, changes which, in a mainly English-speaking country, cannot help but influence the practice of comparative literature. These changes are addressed, in a broader educational, professional, and historical setting, by Wendell Harris's essay in this issue, though opinions on these matters in other literature departments will naturally differ to some degree. At the same time, however , the controversy reminded this comparatist of another, apparently forgotten canonical threesome—a "Western" one that placed Shakespeare in the wider linguistic and cultural contexts of Homer and Dante. Whatever the protestors' animus against the most recent triad of race, gender, and class, the seemingly easy effacement of Homer and Dante in favor ofMilton and Chaucer could provoke reflection in its own right. For one thing, this English-only canon points up the declining centrality of Dante for contemporary literary study in the United States, a trend that is examined from another angle in an essay by this issue's guest editor, Mary Ann Frese Witt. In a companion piece, Jeanne Smoot argues for Homer's continued relevance in our age ofmulticulturalism. More broadly , however, the protesters' apparent unconcern for cultural and linguistic diversity (even to the limited extent provided by Western literature in translation) revealed comparative literature's perennial lack ofcanonical status within the American university, whether that university is seen historically, in its imported late-nineteenth-century form, or in its current high-tech avatar. For many reasons, then, comparatists will probably feel that discussions ofthe canon can be limited and misleading. Vol·. 21- (2000): 1 EDITOR'S COLUMN "Canonicity" would seem preferable, with its connotations both of allowing for different canons in different cultural situations and of trying to gain theoretical distance and perspective on an often contentious topic. This year's issue of 77ie Comparatist begins with a unit that explores these questions in greater depth. Inspired by an SCLA-sponsored seminar at the 1998 meeting ofthe American Comparative Literature Association , it assumed its current shape under the direction of Associate Editor Witt. To the essays by Jeanne Smoot and herself, both based on presentations at the original seminar, she has added newly commissioned ones by Harris and by Sarah Lawall (now the general editor ofthe Norton Anthology of World Literature), as well as a thoughtful introduction . Taken as a whole, the unit brings home the often overlapping but at times competing visions ofcanonicity evoked by such much-used terms as "great books," "universality," "world literature," "multiculturalism," or "globalization." At a more practical level, the essays examine the impact of anthologies and curricular choices on canon formation, and seek —at a time of some tension between literary and cultural study—to single out and defend the merits of the literary. The essays by Lawall and Witt also consider what an ideal comparatist curriculum might look like at the current juncture in the United States. The next three...