What is ‘Comparative’ Literature?

Abstract

This article approaches the problems of self-definition surrounding ‘comparative literature’ by analysing the nature of comparison per se, and the place of this practice in literary criticism past and present. It argues that comparison in its broadest sense is involved in all thought, but that comparison in the strictest sense is involved in only a minority of all criticism, whether described as comparative or otherwise. Certain works of literature call especially clearly for a comparative approach, through allusion to other works, or through establishing internally comparative structures (for example in parallel plots); such works might collectively be denoted by the noun phrase ‘comparative literature’. The nature of ‘comparability’ is analysed, and various factors affecting the results of comparison are noted in turn, including the topic on which the comparanda are compared, their number, and the degree of detail of their description. It is argued that literary criticism would benefit from greater selfconsciousness with regard to comparison, and that departments of comparative literature would be well-placed to lead the process of theorising comparison, which hitherto has been remarkably overlooked. Comparison per se This article concerns a practice which is involved in all reading, yet has hardly ever been the explicit subject of literary theory. Comparison, in the broadest sense of term, is the mental process which enables us to perceive similarity and difference. Smells and ideas cannot be distinguished without perceiving their similarities and differences to others. Will cannot be exercised without comparing options; to choose comes from gusto, and involves, as Sainsburies would have us do, tasting the difference. A critic describes a literary work as mimetic only after comparing it with both life and other works. Matthew Arnold, who coined the term comparative literature as a translation of literature comparee, claimed in his inaugural lecture at Oxford University in 1857 that ‘No single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literature’. ii In our own century, Richard Rorty wrote: ‘Good criticism is a matter of bouncing some of the books you have read off the rest of the books you have read’. iii (2006: 64) He might have added that good reading of