Some Thoughts on Comparative Literature and World Literature

Abstract

For Yue Daiyun , a leading Chinese scholar of comparative literature, there is a tremendous amount at stake in the study of literature across languages and cultures. In reading Yue's essay, readers will likely be struck by the global breadth of her arguments, the intercultural scope of her supports, and the forceful manner in which she situates China within this invigorated vision for what the field of comparative literature is and what it can be. Citing trends in both Chinese and Western criticism, Yue argues that China offers an important site in which to locate cultural difference vis-à-vis the Western literary and philosophical tradition in ways capable of disclosing forms of provincialism difficult to discern from within these discourses. From this point, Yue argues that new forms of intercultural studies can begin to challenge the homogenizing effects of globalization, yet at the same time they can resist the cultural essentialism and nationalism that would threaten to close down intercultural ways of reading and honoring a wide continuum of cultural discourses marked by differences and hybridities alike.