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theories and
methodologies
Comparative
Literature?
HAUN SAUSSY
ODOLOGY, CERTAINLY (WHICH RAISES THE QUESTION OF WHY
literature on the university campuses where it was done. The English de-
trants, thus laying a basis for the discipline's continued social reproduc-
tion; but it did not always specify the three languages or dictate the
tive literature programs would not expand to cover all the territory of the
humanities (if anyone was worried about that), but it did not go far toward
answering the question, What is, or is not, comparative literature? The rule
the object of study. (And even in its influence on membership, the rule
Asian languages and comparative liter-
ature at Stanford University. could be applied inconsistently: for lack of relevant programs or person-
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I I 8.2 2 Haun Saussy 337
rP
3
it; and in pragmatic terms, this fragility was real-
r
r0
_5
Comparative? Literature?
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of developmental account. Through that account,
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PMLA
338 Comparative Literature?
Indeed, one of the cornerstones of the de- was needed. Historical studies (influence and re-
,1
t!
.C
sort of claim. Reaching back to a time before and similarity could disregard it, taking for
their increasing mutual opacity, Curtius recon- found necessary. "Theory," never a compact
Io
structs a common basis for the major European philosophical system, migrated from case to
4^:
literatures in Latin authors and topoi.1 The case or let itself be carried with the broadening
Latin basis was there all along, hidden in the acceptance of certain historical narratives or
scholarship restores it to view, elucidating the Perhaps the best thing about comparative
differential paths taken and leading them back literature is its failure to live up to its name. Un-
to the source. Curtius's mode of comparison is a like the other comparative disciplines, this one
Although new tools such as genetics and is not about discovering the "third thing" on
ethology confirmed the usefulness of tree- shaped which two other things stand as on a common
comparativism for the biological sciences, in ground of identity. It must then have an unusual
most of the human sciences the narratives pro- logic. Perhaps a "rhizomatic" logic (Deleuze
In and And
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I I 8.2 2
Haun Saussy 339
the lateral construction of linking elements. gether. The job of every comparative literature
PO
Leaving aside Curtius's "Romania," with its ori- book is to find that out, and rarely do two an-
*1
entation toward historical recovery, the model swers coincide. Metalepsis (the positing as ac-
(A
texts of comparative literature link together sets complished of something yet to occur) is the
z
of examples whose mutual coherence is not ob- structuring trope of these speculative investiga-
CL
the reader who asks, "What do X, Y, and Z have walk on it. The willingness to tolerate readings
7
to do with one another?" could only get the an- that produce, rather than discover, meanings
0;
Erich Auerbach's Mimesis proffers a histor- tive literature and shows why its virtues are in-
611
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PMLA
340 Comparative Literature?
(,
(Ransom; Jakobson).
WORKS CITED
than it interferes, as signifiers do, and its interfer- Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin
literature through its objects of knowledge or Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Prince-
350-77.
pends to a great extent upon the shape of the fig- Grosset, 1964.
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118.2
Haun Saussy
34I
Morgan, Henry Lewis. Ancient Society. New York: World, Ransom, John Crowe. Beating the Bushes: Selected Essays
1877.
1941-1970. New York: New Directions, 1972.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Values in a Universe of Chance: Schulz, Hans-Joachim, and Phillip H. Rhein, eds. Compara-
Selected Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce. Ed. Philip tive Literature, the Early Years: A Collection of Essays.
P. Wiener. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1958. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1973.
Qian Zhongshu. Guan zhui bian [Essays of the Pipe and Spitzer, Leo. Essays in Historical Semantics. New York:
Ce
-. Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters. Trans. . Linguistics and Literary History: Essays in Stylis- 0
Ronald Egan. Cambridge: Harvard U Asia Center, tics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1948.
Fo
1998.
"Surveying." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1964 ed.
Q.
oq
&P
o,
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