The Adaptive Comparative

Abstract

European literary histories are steeped in botanical metaphors. So, for example, the plant figure is found in the elaborations of Friedrich Schlegel, arguably the founder of modern literary history, as when he writes in Epochs of Poetry, ‘in the Homeric plant we see, as it were, the origin of all poetry; the roots are lost to our sight but the blossoms and branches of the plant emerge from the darkness of Antiquity in their incomparable splendour’.1 In this developmental narrative of literary history, the ‘seed’ of a nation is planted by the earliest national poet, then grows, maturing in the soil of tradition, and finally blooms to express the ‘essence’ of a people. This metaphorical frame has served critics well for organizing literary histories along national lines. As John Neubauer noted, ‘Organicism infused literary histories as the study of literature became slowly institutionalized in the course of the nineteenth century’.2 When accounts of national literatures are given the conceptual structure of roots, branches and blossoms, like so many groves of trees in an arboretum, it naturally follows that they are seen to develop autonomously, their essential qualities flourishing as they stand free of alien influences. But when literatures are compared, the botanical metaphor primes comparisons for a specific kind of practice, one that notes parallels between autonomous organisms that grow independently side by side. This is the canonical sense of the comparative with which we are familiar: it refers to something like the bringing together (from Latin ‘com’: with) of parallels (from ‘par’: equal) while reading across cultures beyond one’s own classical heritage. This model of the comparative upholds ideals like diversity, plurality and heterogeneity. It is often seen to be broadening horizons, pulling