Damrosh Compartive Literature

8/6/2019 Damrosh Compartive Literature

1/6

Modern Language Association

Comparative Literature?Author(s): David DamroschSource: PMLA, Vol. 118, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 326-330Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261419

Accessed: 16/08/2009 04:15

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261419?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mlahttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mlahttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1261419?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/6

PMLA

theories andmethodologies

ComparativeLiterature?DAVID DAMROSCH

DAVIDAMROSCHs professorof Englishand comparative iterature t ColumbiaUniversityand presidentof the Ameri-canComparativeLiterature ssociation.Heis the author of TheNarrativeCove-nant(Harper,987),WeScholars:Chang-ing theCulture f theUniversityHarvardUP,1995),Meetingsof theMind(Prince-ton UP,2000),and What sWorldLitera-ture? PrincetonUP, orthcoming) ndofarticleson ancient,medieval,and mod-ern literature nd theory.He is also thegeneraleditorof TheLongmanAnthol-ogy of BritishLiterature2nded., 2002)andof TheLongmanAnthology f WorldLiterature(forthcoming).

326

IN RECENTYEARS,NORTHAMERICANLITERARYTUDIESHASBEENMARKED YA DOUBLEMOVEMENT: UTWARDFROMTHEEuro-Americanspheretowardthe entire globe and inwardwithin na-tional traditions,in an intensifiedengagementwith local culturesandsubcultures.Both directionsmightseem natural timulito comparativestudy-most obviously in the transnationalrameof global studiesbutalso in morelocal comparisons:a naturalway to understandhe distinc-tivenessof a given culture,afterall, is to compare t withand contrast tto others.Yetjournalarticlesandjob listings alikehave not shown anymajorgrowth n comparative mphasis n recentyears.Is thecomparatistdoomedto irrelevance,ess equipped han he national pecialist orlocalstudyandyet finding he literaryglobe expanding artherand fartheroutof reach,accessibleonly to a multitudeof, again, ocal specialists?The specterof amateurismhauntscomparative iterature oday.Asformalistapproacheshavewaned,scholarshavefound so much to learnabout hefull outlinesof individual ultures hat heyhaveoftenpreferreddelvingdeeplyintoone time andplaceoverpursuingbroad-based om-parisons.Formuchof thetwentieth entury, omparatiststakedoutadis-tinctmiddleground n betweenthe national iteratures nd thevastspaceof thefullglobe,mostoftenconcentrating nthemajor iterary raditionsof westernEuropeas a graspablegroundof internationalomparison.Asliterarystudies has begun to wake from its long Eurocentricslumber,though,thismiddlegroundhasfadedin importance,as hascomparativeliterature'selatedadvantage incethe 1970sintheimport-exportrade nEuropeaniterary heory.Todaymuchtheory s homegrown,and"travel-ing theory"circulates argely n translation,ts conceptsandtexts seem-ingly usable without special regardto their time and place of origin,therebyundercutting specialroleforcomparativeiteraturentheoreticalwork(Said,"Travelling heory"and"Travelling heoryReconsidered").Inprinciple, hegrowingemphasison world iterature rovidesanewvenueforcomparativetudy.Yetpostcolonialandglobalstudiestoday-focusingon issuesof transmission ndadaptationwithina linguisticnet-worklike those of francophoneor global English literature-are often

I ? 2003 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA


3/6

David Damrosch 327

hardly ess monolingual hanmost studies of na-tional traditions.Literaturesoutside the majorcolonialtraditions ontinueto be studiedmostlyby specialistswho havedevoteddecadesto theirchosen languagesand cultures. Excellentcom-parativework is being done in such areas(e.g.,SheldonPollock on IndianvernacularsandSte-ven Venturinoon Tibetanpostmodernism),andyet such venturesomeworkis still theexceptionrather hantherule,and it underscores hediffi-culty of doing serious work on a truly globalbasis.Lackinga deep knowledgeof more than afew cultures,arecomparatists onstrained itherto stay within a limited rangeof material or tosuccumb to a kind of scholarly tourism? TheprominentcomparatistA. OwenAldridgeusedthisanalogyquitepositively twentyyearsago:

Inthedaysof exploration,t wouldhavebeenimpossible orany singleEuropean avigatorto cover n a lifetime he entiregeographicx-panseof the twoAmerican ontinents,but inthe twentiethentury nytourist anvisitby jetairplane llof themajor entersof populationin threeor fourmonths.We mayhopefor asimilarutureprogressoward niversalover-agein thestudyof literature. (1)

We need a bettermodel today thanliterary et-settingif we are to developcomparative tudiesadequate to the scope of the materials nowavailable for comparison. Comparative itera-ture can thrive in the coming years, but onlythrough a renewed engagement with nationaltraditionsand with global contexts. HereI willdiscuss our problems and our options underthreerubrics:national nternationalism,ulturaltranslation, ndspecializedgeneralism.

National InternationalismAs a discipline,comparativeiterature rosein akind of competitive symbiosis with the nation-alisms dominant n nineteenth-centuryEurope.Whilesomecomparatiststudied heinteractionsof national raditions, therssawthenation-state

as destined,like capitalism,to witherawayin afew decades. This is the perspectivethatMarxand Engels endorsedin the CommunistMani-festo of 1847, where they followed Goethe inproclaimingthe rise of world literature as theculturalmirror f apostnationalworld:

Thebourgeoisie asthroughtsexploitationfthe worldmarket ivenacosmopolitanharac-ter to productionandconsumptionn everycountry. othegreat hagrin f reactionariesthas drawn romunder he feet of industryhenationalgroundon which it stood. All old-establishednational ndustrieshave been de-stroyedor aredaily being destroyed. .. Inplaceof theold ocalandnational eclusion ndself-sufficiency,we have ntercoursen everydirection,niversalnterdependencef nations.And asin material,o also in intellectualpro-duction.Nationalone-sidednessandnarrow-mindedness ecomemoreandmorempossible,and rom henumerous ationalnd ocal itera-tures,herearisesaworlditerature. (421)

The seductive lure of "intercourse n every di-rection"became the norm inpostwarAmerica.The comparatistsof the 1950s saw the field ofworld literature as the grandsuccessor to "thenationalisticheresy,"as AlbertGuerardputit ina lead article in the Yearbookof Comparativeand GeneralLiteraturen 1958. Lookingaheadto Europeanunification, Guerardanticipatedthat "ComparativeLiteraturewill disappear nits veryvictory;just as 'foreigntrade'betweenFranceandGermanywill disappearn the Com-mon Market; ust as the 'foreign relations' be-tweenthese two countrieswill be absorbedby acommonparliament"4). ForGuerard,heover-riding question in 1958 was, "How and whenshall we commit suicide?" His answer: "Notjust yet:we areneeded so long as thenationalis-tic heresyhas notbeenextirpated"5).We can no longer proceed as though thisheresyis aboutto disappear.TheEuropeanPar-liament in Brussels is unlikely to supplantEu-rope'snationalgovernments uringour ifetimes,andin anacademiccontextthegreatmajorityof

So

_.

et0o.006Q.u*

t/

I 8.2 ]


4/6

328 ComparativeLiterature?

teachersand scholarsof literature ontinue o bebased in departmentsorganizedalong nationallines. Whatdoes theongoing vitalityof nationalliterary raditionsmeanfor theunderstandingfworldliterature?Muchrecentliterarystudy, n-spiredby figures ike FoucaultandSaid,takesadim view of nationalist deologies andimperialenterprises,andyet in an oddwaythecritiqueofnationalismhas turned out to coexist comfort-ablywith a continuingnationalism n academicpractice.The moreone needsto know,say,aboutthe courtsof QueenElizabeth andKingJamesIto understand hakespeare,heless timeone hasavailable to learnabout the culturalunderpin-ningsof FrenchdramaorGreek ragedy,andonetendsto downplaywhatonedoesn'tknow.

Moving beyond a regionally linked set oftraditions is harderstill. The more committedtoday's Shakespeareansbecome to understand-ing literaturewithinculturalcontext-at times,almost as a function of cultural context-theless likely they are to feel comfortable n com-paringShakespeareandKalidasa.Indeed,evenin a single regiona rangeof disparateiteraturescan seem too dauntingto tackle. Severalyearsago I was on a searchcommitteelookingto hirea medievalist;one of thehottesttopicswe foundamong our applicationswas the origins of na-tionalism in the medieval kingdoms that werestrugglingfor masteryin the BritishIsles. Theseveralwritingsampleson aspectsof this themeall took a critical attitudetowardthe efforts ofthe Anglo-Saxons and thenAnglo-Normanstopromotethemselvesculturallyandextendtheirsway politically,andyet none of these scholarswas doingany work in IrishorWelshliterature.Not on principle,no doubt,since therichnessofboth traditions n the medievalperiodis widelyrecognized: hemedievalistssimplyhadnothadtime to learnthose languagesalong with every-thingelse theywerestudying.Insteadof includ-ing materialthey could readonly in translationandwithouta close culturalknowledge,theyleftit out of accountaltogether.Yet works like theIrishTainandtheWelshMabinogiare full of in-

terestfor explorationsof cultural dentity,whilepoets like Dafydd ap Gwilym have fascinatingsatiricalthings to say aboutAnglo-Saxons andAnglo-Normansalike.Deconstructingnational-ism in theory, hesemedievalistshadsuccumbedto it in practice.The point of this example is a double one:morethanever,serious studyof nationaltradi-tions canbenefit romamultilingual ndcompar-ativeperspective; onversely,comparative tudymustengage directlyandaffirmativelywithna-tionaltraditions,whicharehardlyabout o witheraway.Nationalismand nternationalism re nex-tricablyntertwinedoday, otheirmutualbenefit.

Cultural TranslationThroughout he twentiethcentury,comparatiststendedto assume thatnations were ephemeralbutlanguageswereeternal.Thoughnineteenth-centuryscholars ike HutchesonMacaulayPos-netthadoftenworkedcomfortablyn translation,comparativeiteratureonsolidatedtsbaseinsti-tutionallyaround omancephilologyandcompa-rablefieldsof study, ike classicsandEastAsianstudies. As a result, translatedworks were nolonger thought to be available as objects forscholarly study,andcomparatistsperforcene-glectedwhattheycould notread n the original.Comparative tudybecameinstitutionallybifur-cated:world iteraturemightbe taught n transla-tionto undergraduates,utgraduate tudentsandscholars were expected to focus on what theycould readin the original.Adventurouspeoplemightventurebeyondtheboundariesof westernEurope, nto Slavic studiesor "East-West"om-parativestudies, but any given scholar's rangewas sharplydelimited by whateverlanguagestherewas "worldenoughandtime"to study,torecalltheline fromMarvell hatErichAuerbachusedas hisregretful pigraph oMimesis.To thrive today, comparative study mustembrace ranslationarmoreactivelythan t didduring hepastcentury.Wecanstudytextsfruit-fully in good translationso long as we attend o

tA4u

0*00

EICc4)0w

.C

[PMLA


5/6

David Damrosch 329

the culturalcontexts from whichthey come. Anoldercomparatismoften centeredon philologi-cally basedmodesof interpretation,uchas thatadvocatedby Leo Spitzer n LinguisticsandLit-erary History. Yet the insights that AuerbachandSpitzer gleanedfrom evidence like unusualturns of phrase or patterns of assonance canoften be gained at other levels of a text as well.Kafka's haunting ironies play out in sentencestructures hat do not always translatewell, yet"theKafkaesque" s fully visible in translationat the levelsof theparagraph nd of the scene.Translationcan thus be used actively forcomparative study, but it should also be usedcritically,drawingon the work of contemporarytranslation heorists who studylanguageas partof a broadexaminationof cultural ranslation.Anotable example of such an approach is thepathbreakingwork of LawrenceVenuti,closelyattentive o relationsof powerandinfluencebe-tween "source"and"target" ultures.Relatedly,Natalie Melas's forthcomingbook, All the Dif-ference in the World,admirablyconnects com-parative and postcolonial studies, through ajoint examination of issues of culturaltransla-tion in early comparatists like Charles MillsGayley and in the contemporary CaribbeanwriterandtheoristEdouardGlissant.

Specialized GeneralismTheimpulseto do comparativeworkremains,asit has always been, a generalizingone: to lookbeyonda singlecontextortradition.Often n thepast,though,generalistsoperatedat a high levelof culturalabstraction,aking ittleor no note oflocal researchon works andon theirculturesoforigin.Theorists ike NorthropFryeandRolandBarthestypically made little reference to spe-cialized scholarshipas they developedtheirele-ganttheories n works ikeAnatomyof CriticismandSade, Fourier,Loyola.At the end of Mime-sis, Auerbachconfesses his positive relief thatworkingin Istanbulduringthe warhadcut himoff from "technicalliteratureandperiodicals."

He says, "If it had been possible for me to ac-quaintmyself with all the work that has beendone on so many subjects, I might neverhavereachedthe point of writing"(557). Well, yes,but would he have had to read all the scholar-shipeverwrittenon his chosenworksto use anyof it? His arguments ouldhavegainedin depthif he hadconsulted a good selection of the spe-cialized literature,eitherduringthe war,whenhe was in Istanbul,with its extensive library,orafter the war, when he could have revised hismanuscript tanylibraryof his choice.A comparatist asmuchto gainfromanac-tive engagement with specialized knowledge,but this is not to say that a comparativeworkshould simply be the sum total of a set of spe-cialized studies.On the contrary,a comparatistneeds to use the specialized literature selec-tively, with a kind of scholarly tact. When ourpurposeis not to delve into a culturein detail,the readerand even the work may benefit bybeing sparedthe full force of our local knowl-edge. Such selectivity should yield somethingotherthana reduction romtheplenitudeof spe-cialized studies. Intimately awareof a work'slife at home, the specialist is not always in thebestpositionto assess the dramaticallydifferenttermson whicha textmayworkin a distantcul-tureor a new theoretical ramework.Lookingatsuch new contexts, the generalistwill findthatmuch of the specialist's informationaboutthework'sorigins s no longerrelevantandnotonlycan but should be set aside. At the same time,any workthathas not been wholly assimilatedto its new context will still carrywith it manyelementsthatcanbestbe understoodhroughanexplorationof why they came to be there in thefirst place. The specialist's knowledge is themajorsafeguardagainstthe generalist'swill topowerovertextsthatotherwiseall too easilybe-come gristfor the mill of a preformedhistoricalargument rtheoretical ystem.WhenI distinguish pecialists romgeneral-ists, I mean to characterizeapproachesratherthan individuals. Anyone can be a specialist

erf.

o1ei

Is

oe

Q.

I I 8.2 2


6/6

330 Comparative Literature?

in some areasand a generalistin others.Whenwe use a generalistapproach,we shouldnotcastoff ourspecialist selves-or our specialist col-leagues.Instead, hegeneralisthasthesameethi-cal responsibility owardspecializedscholarshipthata translatorhas towarda text's original an-guage:to present heworkeffectively in its newculturalortheoreticalcontextwhile atthe sametime fundamentallygetting it right with refer-enceto the sourceculture.Toooften,a generalistwho alludesdismissively to the narrow-mindedconcernsof specialistswill merelyendupretail-ing a warmed-overversion of what specialistswere saying a generation earlier. Generalistshave muchto learnfrom specialists andshouldalways tryto buildhonestly,thoughselectively,on the specialists' understandings,deally eveninspiring the specialists to revise their under-standingsn turn.

Comparativestudy today is becoming asconcerned with national as with internationalcontexts, as involved with translationsas withoriginal texts, and as connected to specializedscholarshipas to generalapproaches.Compara-tive literatures experiencingthe excitementofa newly global possibility, while at the sametime it can continue to exert a leavening influ-ence on nationallybasedandspecializedstudy.Comparativeiterature?Absolutely!

WORKSITEDAldridge,A. Owen. "East/WestComparativeLiterature:An

Inquiry nto Possibilities." Chinese-WesternCompara-

[PMLA

tiveLiteratureTheoryand Strategy.Ed.JohnJ. Deeney.HongKong:ChineseUP, 1980. 1-24.

Auerbach,Erich.Mimesis:TheRepresentation f RealityinWesternLiterature.Trans.WillardR. Trask.Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1953.Barthes, Roland. Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Trans. RichardHoward.New York:Hill, 1976.

Frye,Northrop.Anatomyof Criticism:FourEssays. Prince-ton:PrincetonUP, 1957.Gayley,CharlesMills. "WhatIs ComparativeLiterature?"1903. ComparativeLiterature: The Early Years. Ed.Hans-Joachim chulzandPhillipH. Rhein.ChapelHill:U of NorthCarolinaP, 1973. 85-103.Glissant,Edouard.CaribbeanDiscourse: Selected Essays.Trans.J. MichaelDash. Charlottesville:U of VirginiaP,1989.Gu6rard,Albert. "ComparativeLiterature?"Yearbookof

Comparative nd GeneralLiterature (1958): 1-6.Marx,Karl,andFriedrichEngels. Manifestoof the Commu-nist Party.Trans.SamuelMoore.Marx.Chicago:Ency-clopaedia Britannica, 1952. 415-34. Vol. 50 of GreatBooksof the WesternWorld.Melas, Natalie. All the Difference in the World:Postcolo-

niality and the Endsof Comparison.Stanford:StanfordUP,forthcoming.Pollock, Sheldon."TheCosmopolitanVernacular."ournal

ofAsianStudies57 (1998):6-37.Posnett, Hutcheson Macaulay. Comparative Literature.London: K. Paul, Trench, 1886. New York:Johnson

Reprint,1970.Said, EdwardW. "TravellingTheory."Raritan 1.3 (1982):41-67.. "TravellingTheoryReconsidered."CriticalRecon-structions: The Relationship of Fiction to Life. Ed.Robert M. Polhemus and Roger B. Henkle. Stanford:StanfordUP, 1994.251-65.

Spitzer, Leo. Linguistics and Literary History: Essays inStylistics.Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1948.Venturino,Steven."ReadingNegotiations n theTibetanDi-

aspora."ConstructingTibetanCulture:ContemporaryPerspectives. Ed. FrankJ. Koram.Quebec:WorldHer-itage, 1997.98-121.

Venuti,Lawrence.TheScandalsof Translation:Towards nEthicsof Difference.London:Routledge,1998.

IA4).a00*aEr-IzL.0QI,

4w

Damrosh Compartive Literature

Documents

Transcript of Damrosh Compartive Literature