The Name and Nature of

Comparative Literature
Part I
Rene Wellek

The term "comparative literature"

has given rise to so much discussion,
has been interpreted so differently
and misinterpreted so frequently,
that it might be useful to examine its
history and to attempt to distinguish
its meanings in the main languages.

Only

then can we hope to

define its exact scope and
content. Lexicography,
"historical semantics," will be
our starting point. Beyond it, a
brief history of comparative
studies should lead to
conclusions of contemporary

Comparative literature" is still a

controversial discipline and idea. There
seem no particular problems raised by our
two words individually. "Comparative"
occurs in Middle English, obviously derived
from Latin comparativus. It is used by
Shakespeare, as when Falstaff denounces
Prince Hal as "the most comparative,
rascalliest, sweet young prince,Francis
Meres, as early as 1598, uses the term in
the caption of "A Comparative Discourse of
Our English Poets with the Greek, Latin and
Italian Poets.

The adjective occurs m the titles of

seventeenth-and eighteenth-century
books. In 1602 William Fulbecke
published A Comparative Discourse
of the Laws. I also find A Comparative
Anatomy of Brute Animals in 1765.
Its author, John Gregory, published A
Comparative View of the State and
Faculties of Man with hose of the
Animal World in the very next year.

Bishop Robert Lowth in his Latin

Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the
Hebrews (1753), formulated the ideal of
comparative study well enough: "We
must see all things with their eyes [i.e.
the ancient Hebrews]: estimate all
things by their opinions; we must
endeavour as much as possible to read
Hebrew as the Hebrews would have read
it.

In 1800 Charles Dibdin published, in five

volumes, A Complete History of the
English Stage, Introduced by a
Comparative and Comprehensive Review
of the Asiatic, the Grecian, the Roman,he
Spanish, the Italian, the Portuguese, the
German, the French and Other Theatres.
Here the main idea is fully formulated, but
the combination "comparative literature"
itself seems to occur for the first time only
in a letter by Matthew Arnold in 1848,
where he says: "How plain it is now,
though an attention to the comparative
literatures for the last fifty years might
have instructed any one of it, that England
is in a certain sense far behind the
Continent.

But this was a private letter not

published till 1895, and
"comparative" means here hardly
more than "comparable." In English
the decisive use was that of
Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett, an Irish
barrister who later became Professor
of Classics and English Literature at
University College, Auckland, New
Zealand, who put the term on the
title of his book in 1886.

Posnett, in an article, The Science of

Comparative Literature," claimed "to
have first stated and illustrated the
method and principles of the new
science, and to have been the first to
do so not only in the British Empire
but in the world.''Obviously this is
preposterous, even if we limit
"comparative literature" to the
specific meaning Posnett gave to it.
The English term cannot be
discussed in isolation from analogous
terms in France and Germany.

The lateness of the English term can

be explained if we realize that the
combination "comparative literature"
was resisted in English, because the
term "literature" had lost its earlier
meaning of "knowledge or study of
literature" and had come to mean
"literary production in general" or "the
body of writings in a period, country,
or region."

That this long process is complete

today is obvious from such a fact
that, e.g., Professor Lane Cooper of
Cornell University refused to call the
department he headed in the
twenties "Comparative Literature"
and insisted on "The Comparative
Study of Literature." He considered it
a "bogus term" that "makes neither
sense nor syntax." "You might as well
permit yourself to say 'comparative
potatoes' or 'comparative husks.'
But in earlier English usage
"literature" means "learning" and
"literary culture,"particularly a
knowledge of Latin.

Incomplete or even slightly incorrect

in its detail, this history of the terms
in the main languages could become
more meaningful if treated in the
context of competition with rival
terms. "Comparative literature"
occurs in what semanticists have
called "a field of meaning." We have
alluded to "learning," "letters," and
"belles lettres" as rival terms for
"literature."

"Universal literature," "international

literature," "general literature," and
"world literature" are the competitors
of "comparative literature. Universal
literature'' occurs in the eighteenth
century and is used rather widely in
German .where "general literature"
means what we would call"theory of
literature" or "principles of criticism."

The term "world literature," Weltliteratur,

was used by Goethe in 1827 in commenting
on a translation of his drama Tasso into
French, and then several times, sometimes
in slightly different senses: he was thinking
of a single unified world literature in which
differences between the indi viduaI
literatures would disappear, though he
knew that this would be quite remote. In a
draft Goethe equates "European" with
"world literature," surely provisionally.

Just as the exact use of "world literature"

is still debatable, the use of "comparative
literature" has given rise to disputes as to
its exact scope and methods, which are
not yet resolved. It is useless to be
dogmatic about such matters, as words
have the meaning authors assign to them
and neither a knowledge of history nor
common usage can prevent changes or
even complete distortions of the original
meaning. Still, clarity on such matters
avoids mental confusion, while excessive
ambiguity or arbitrariness leads to
intellectual dangers which may not be as
serious as calling hot, cold, or communism
democracy, but which still hamper
agreement and communication.

One can distinguish, first, a strict,

narrow definition; Van Tieghem, for
example, defines it thus: "The object
of comparative literature is
essentially the study of diverse
literatures in their relations with one
another.'' Guyard in his handbook,
which follows Van Tieghem closely in
doctrine and contents, calls
comparative literature succinctly "the
history of international literary
relations,''and J.-M.Carr in his
Preface to Guyard, calls it "a branch
of literary history; it is the study of
spiritual international relations,

of factual contacts which took

place between Byron and Pushkin,
Goethe and Carlyle, Waiter Scott
and Vigny, between the works, the
inspirations and even the lives of
writers belonging to several
literatures.'

In a wider sense "comparative

literature" includes what Van Tieghem
calls "general literature." He confines
"comparative literature" to "binary"
relations, between two elements,
while "general literature" concerns
research into "the facts common to
several literatures.'' It can, however,
be argued that it is impossible to
draw a line between comparative
literature and general literature,

Besides, the term "general

literature" lends itself to
confusion: it has been
understood to mean literary
theory, poetics, the principles of
literature. Comparative literature
in the narrow sense of binary
relations cannot make a
meaningful discipline, as it would
have to deal only with the
"foreign trade" between
literatures and hence with
fragments of literary production.

It would not allow treating the

individual work of art. It would be
(as apparently Carr is content to
think) a strictly auxiliary
discipline of literary history with
a fragmentary, scattered subject
matter and with no peculiar
method of its own.

The method of comparison is not

peculiar to comparative literature; it is
ubiquitous in all literary study and in all
sciences, social and natural. Nor does
literary study, even in the practice of
the most orthodox comparative
scholars, proceed by the method of
comparison alone. Any literary scholar
will not only compare but reproduce,
analyze, interpret, evoke, evaluate,
generalize, etc., all on one page.

Questions

1.Lexical meaning of the term

"comparative literature"
2.The historical semantics of
"comparative literature"
3.Whats the meaning of "world
literature" and "general literature"
What is your understanding of
Comparative literature as a discipline?