Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, World Literature, and the Colonial Comparisons

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-349
Author(s):  
Blaž Zabel
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
British Empire ◽  
World Literature ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
Imperial Politics

Abstract This article discusses the work of the early Irish comparatists Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, who in 1886 published the first monograph in English in comparative literature. By bringing into discussion Posnett’s lesser-known journalistic publications on politics, the essay argues that his comparative project was importantly determined by the contemporary challenges of British imperial politics and by his own position in the British Empire. The article investigates several aspects of Posnett’s work in the context of British colonialism: his understanding of literature and literary criticism, his perception of the English and French systems of national literature, and his understanding of world literature and classical literature. Recognising the imperial and colonial context of Comparative Literature additionally highlights the development of literary comparisons, which have marked subsequent discussions in the discipline.

scholarly journals Comparative Literature, World Literature and Ethical Literary Criticism. Literature’s “Infra-Other”

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-18
Author(s):  
Jüri Talvet
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
International Association ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Literary Research ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
The World ◽  
Sociological Approaches

Relying on some of the ideas of Yuri M. Lotman on “semiosphere”, the dynamics and dialogue between “centres” and “peripheries”, as well as on my own ideas on cultural symbiosis expounded in my essay books A Call for Cultural Symbiosis. Meditations from U (Toronto, 2005) and Kümme kirja Montaigne’ile. “Ise ja “teine” (Ten Letters to Montaigne. ‘Self ” and ‘Other’, in Estonian: Tartu, 2014; in English, 2018) and inspired by the recent foundation in China of the International Association for Ethical Literary Criticism, I will try to meditate on the interrelation of Comparative Literature, World Literature and Ethical Literary Criticism both in theory and in the practice of teaching and researching literature at universities and high schools. The main purpose is to look at the ways how a “self”-centred practice of literary research and teaching (formalistic as well as sociological approaches, restricting World Literature to the Western mainstream, or just dealing with one’s own national literature, avoiding its comparative contextualization) could be gradually replaced by a symbioticdialogical treatment of literature, capable of providing our activity with a firm and solid ethical dimension, something that would definitely strengthen the position of humanities in the world academia.

scholarly journals ARTISTIC SPACE OF THE POETRY OF KORYAK VLADIMIR KOYANTO

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1061-1068
Author(s):  
A.A. Arzamazov
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Minority Literature ◽  
Text Corpus ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
History Of

The article is devoted to the poetry of the Koryak Vladimir Koyanto, the second and probably the last writer in the history of this national literature. The features of his artistic world are considered, the main problem-thematic sections are identified, key motives and images are established, the linguistic aspects of poetry are analyzed. The interpretation of the extensive text corpus showed that the poet was acutely worried about the collapse of Soviet reality, it was difficult for him to get used to the new post-Soviet era. The theme of unfavorable, destructive modernity, the motive of unfulfilled expectations in V. Koyanto’ poems are widespread. In a number of texts the presence of a mythological substrate is recorded, the influence of the traditional culture of the Koryaks on artistic narratives is observed. It is emphasized that the author was focused on the traditions of Russian classical literature and at the same time associated himself with the circumpolar ethnocultural landscape. An appeal to the works of V. Koyanto is of great importance for comparative literature studies, it gives an idea of the ways and problems of the development of “minority” literature as a complex cultural phenomenon.

scholarly journals Comparative Literature as Educational Means of Understanding and Communication

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zelenková
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
National Language ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Literary Education ◽  
European Area ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
Language And Literature

Abstract The paper explores possibilities of a more intensive use of comparative literature within literary education in which the adoration of national literature prevails together with the abstraction of the concept of world literature. This means putting more emphasis on area and comparative approaches. Emphasising comparative literature may bring in a search and respect for otherness, since it is not connected to any national language and literature, to any concrete tradition and culture, but refers to their variability, with the aim of explaining the contact with the other, which can be close as well as different. More effort should be put especially on the attempt to point to the interconnectedness and mutual influencing. The so-called educational, didactically applied comparatistics is a field of comparative literary studies aimed at overcoming binary, ethnolinguistic opposition of “the national” and “the worldly” in education, and, as far as literary education is concerned, it could become a new methodological stimulus. As a methodological basis of this educational comparative studies is being used the hermeneutic understanding of otherness, though not the interculturally remote one, but a close otherness which exists, for example, in the intertextuality of a particular work emerging within the framework of the “neighbourhood” of common Central European area. What is meant here is, first of all, the so-called innovated imagology, concentrated on the interpretation of images by means of which verbal text renders foreign countries and nations. The overall meaning of imagological impulses can also be seen on the weakening of the opposition of the traditional categories of “national” and “world”, as well as in the overcoming of the ideas of some cultures being more developed at the expense of other ones. Applying the area and comparative approach, educational comparative studies may facilitate the dialogue of literature as art also with other spheres, and have integrating as well as didactic function, or develop the feeling of mutuality and the ability to “compare”, not only in linguistic and ethnic circumstances, but in the value-contextual ones as well.

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Daniel Elam
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
British Empire ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Face ◽  
Theories Of Reading

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth recovers an alternative strain of anticolonialism that does not seek national sovereignty, authority, and political recognition, but advocates instead inexpertise, unknowing, unintelligibility, and collective unrecognizability. Early twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers endeavored to imagine a world emancipated from colonial rule, but it was a world they knew they would likely not live to see. Written in exile, in abjection, or in the face of death, anticolonial thought could not afford to base its politics on the hope of eventual success. This book shows how anticolonial thinkers theorized inconsequential practices of egalitarianism in the service of impossibility: a world without colonialism. To trace this impossible political theory, this book foregrounds anticolonial theories of reading and critique in the writing of four thinkers, Lala Har Dayal, B. R. Ambedkar, M. K. Gandhi, and Bhagat Singh. These activists theorized reading not as a way to cultivate mastery and expertise, but as a way of rather to disavow mastery and expertise altogether. Reading was antiauthoritarian precisely because it urged readers to refuse authorship and, relatedly, authority. To become or remain a reader, and divest oneself of authorial claims, was to challenge the logic of the British Empire and European fascism, which prized self-mastery, authority, and sovereignty. Bringing together the histories of comparative literature and anticolonial thought, Elam demonstrates how these early twentieth-century theories of reading force us to reconsider the commitments of humanistic critique and egalitarian politics.

Indonesian Literature’s Position in World Literature

TEKNOSASTIK ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Dina Amelia
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Western World ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Voice

There are two most inevitable issues on national literature, in this case Indonesian literature. First is the translation and the second is the standard of world literature. Can one speak for the other as a representative? Why is this representation matter? Does translation embody the voice of the represented? Without translation Indonesian literature cannot gain its recognition in world literature, yet, translation conveys the voice of other. In the case of production, publication, or distribution of Indonesian Literature to the world, translation works can be very beneficial. The position of Indonesian literature is as a part of world literature. The concept that the Western world should be the one who represent the subaltern can be overcome as long as the subaltern performs as the active speaker. If the subaltern remains silent then it means it allows the “representation” by the Western.

On the sources of cosmopolitanism as an idea: The Russian and the European views

2020 ◽  
pp. 44-69
Author(s):  
E. E. Dmitrieva
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Literary History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
General Term ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Literary Environment

The article is concerned with the difference in understanding of the term ‘cosmopolitan’ inRussiaandFrance. Often considered a predominantly negative phenomenon inRussia, cosmopolitanism fi st provoked a discussion at the time when the emphasis shifted from ideology to understanding of the historical-literary process. Since the late 18th c., the idea of the possible existence of a literary work within the global literary environment (the concept of world literature)   was adjusted by the ‘golden chain’ metaphor, which enabled implementation of the ‘universality’ concept as a unity principally separate from the French idée universelle. During this evolutionary period emerged a distinctive subject of literary history: fi st, ‘humanity’ as a general term (initially identifi    with universalism or cosmopolitanism), and then ‘a nation’. But it is the discovery of the national that the author believes is connected with particularism and provincialism,   the latter summoning the memory of the noble intention of universalism and cosmopolitanism. An interim summary of the process was produced by Joseph Texte, a professor of comparative literature inLyon, at the end of the 19th c.

Milton in China ‘Yet Once More’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bing Yan
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Collaborative Context ◽  
Chinese Literary Criticism ◽  
Near Future

This chapter overviews Chinese reception of Milton, with an emphasis on some of the most well-known Chinese translations of Paradise Lost. Close readings of these translations against Milton’s original demonstrate the difficulties of and resolutions for rendering Milton’s verse specific to Chinese. The subsequent discussion of the paratexts accompanying Chinese translations and of ‘introduction to world literature’ series gives a sense of the collaborative context that has shaped and continues to shape today’s general reception of Milton in China. That politically charged reception, eager to view Milton’s Satan as the embodiment of the poet’s revolutionary spirit, also dominates some recent works of Chinese literary criticism. The chapter ends by conceding that, while Milton scholarship in China has been relatively univocal and is still young, recent developments in world literature promise that innovative and intriguing work on Milton can be expected from China in the near future.

The world in Auerbach’s mouth: Weltliteratur after philhellenism

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-452
Author(s):  
Mathura Umachandran
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Intercultural Understanding ◽  
The World

Abstract We live in an age of globalized and globalizing phenomena: the contemporary agenda of academic inquiry takes in ‘networks’, ‘connectivity’, and other modes of articulating complex structures of human activity. In Comparative Literature and beyond, the idea of world literature has borne the weight of idealist intercultural understanding, the hopes of translation studies, and the anxieties around the failure of communication. Erich Auerbach offers a touchstone in the conceptual genealogy of world literature (Weltliteratur). This article illuminates how Auerbach’s Weltliteratur is predicated on a polemic with German philhellenism, tracked through Auerbach’s declaration that his idea is ‘ungoethisch’. Auerbach’s revisions to Weltliteratur constituted a strategy to render it a historicist concept. Since Auerbach’s notion of historicism was itself derived from nineteenth-century German humanism, this essay argues that Auerbach was attempting to go with Goethe beyond Goethe. Finally, this essay assesses how successful Auerbach’s decoupling of Weltliteratur from universalism, under the sign of Goethe and the Greeks. I suggest that Weltliteratur is still a pertinent concept today because of Auerbach’s intervention to install historicist and dialectical resources therein.

Against Global Literary Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Edmond
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
The World

Abstract Literary studies has taken a global turn through such institutional frameworks as global romanticism, global modernism, global anglophone, global postcolonial, global settler studies, world literature, and comparative literature. Though promising an escape from parochialism, nationalism, and Eurocentrism, this turn often looks suspiciously like another version of Anglo-European imperialism. This essay argues that, rather than continue the expansionary line of recent decades, global literary studies must allow other perspectives to draw into question its concepts, practices, and theories, including those associated with the terms literature, discipline, and comparison. As a settler colonial (Pākehā) scholar in Aotearoa New Zealand, I attend particularly to Māori literary scholars from Apirana Ngata, Te Kapunga Matemoana (Koro) Dewes, and Hirini Melbourne to Alice Te Punga Somerville, Tina Makereti, and Arini Loader. Their work highlights the limitedness of global literary studies in its current disciplinary guise. Disciplines remain important when they bring recognition to something previously marginalized, as in the battle to have Māori literature recognized within Pākehā institutions. What institutionalized modes of global literary studies need, however, is not discipline but indiscipline: a recognition of the limits of dominant disciplinary objects, frameworks, and practices, and an openness to other ways of seeing the world.

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