Neohelicon XXIV/2

ULRICH WEISSTEIN

FROM ECSTASY TO AGONY: THE RISE

AND FALL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

"F_,injeder sucht sich endlich selbst was aus"

Goethe ~

"Chacun n'a plus quqt retrancher [...] ce que lui paragt d~plac~
ou supcrllu pour aboutir h son propre portrait".
Pichoi~Rousseau 2

Several years ago, I promised never again to go public with m y

views on Comparative Literature, the scholarly and academic dis-
cipline with which I have been associated for nearly half a century
and with whose fortunes I have concerned m y s e l f in an irregular
series o f publications ranging from surveys o f the entire field to
historical, methodological, organizational and curricular discussions
o f various kinds. In addition to m y Einfiihrung in die Vergleichen-
de Literaturwissenschaft, 3 an essay meant to be a supplementary
chapter thereoP and a booklength Review o f Research covering
a p p r o x i m a t e l y one decade, 5 these include an a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l

Faust, der Trag6die erster Teil, 1.96 ("Vorspiel auf dem Theater").
2 ClaudePichoisandAndr~-M. Rousseau,Lalittdraturecomparde(Paris:Colin,
1967), p. 174.
3 Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1968, and the English-language version; Compara-
tive Literature and Literary Theory: Survey and Introduction (Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, 1973). The word "theory" in the title was suggested by the
publisher and is not to be taken programmatically or in the sense currently attached
to it.
4 "Influences and Parallels: The Place and Function of Analogy Studies in Com-
parative Literature" in: Teilnahme und Spiegelung: Festschdfi fOr Horst Rfidiger
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Beda Allemann and Erwin Koppen (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1975), pp. 593-609.
5 Vergleichende Literaturwissenschafl: Erster Bericht, 1968-1977 (Bern: Pe-
ter Lang, 1981). The present essay may be regarded as an implicit apology for my
refusal to produce any sequels to this Forschungsbericht.

0324~1652/97/$5.00 Akad~mlai Kiodd, Budapest

9 Akaddmiai load6 John Benjamins B. V., Amsterdam
96 ULRICHWEISSTEIN
sketch, 6 an anatomy,7 a pedagogical piece in a professional jour-
nal, s contributions to two F e s t s c h r i f t e n 9 and the text of a keynote
address given on the occasion of the University of B o l o g n a ' s nine-
hundredth anniversary, l~
Today still a skeptic but mindful of the popular injunction "never
say never", I return to the battlefield strewn with the corp(u)ses Of
countless Introductions, handbooks, manuals, p r e c i s and prognos-
tications issued during the Hundred Years' War waged between
orthodox II and liberal factions within the institution of Compara-
tive Literature. Especially in the final stages of this bloody strug-
gle which, at long last, seems to be on the point of exhausting
itself, some of the third- and fourth-generation rebels have loudly
proclaimed the death of this great Pan and have confidently pre-
dicted that "slowly but certainly a new paradigm is coming to pre-

e "Vergleichund Vergleichgesellt sich gem: Aus dem Leben eines Kompara-

tisten" in: specialissue of arcadia on the occasionof Horst Rfidiger's 75th birthday,
ed. Erwin Koppenand Rfidigeryon Tiedemann(Berlin:de Gruyter, 1983), pp. 147-
156.
7 "D'o/l venons-nous?Que sommes-nous?O6 allons-nous?:The Permanent
Crisis of Comparative Literature". Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 11
(1984), pp. 167-192.
s "Introductionto GraduateStudiesin ComparativeLiteratureat Indiana Uni-
versity: A Descriptionand an Auto-Critique".ACLAN (AmericanComparativeLit-
erature AssociationNewsletter) 9/1, (1979), pp. 42-53.
9 "Komparatistik:Alte Methode oderNeue Wissenschaft?:Grunds~tzlichesans
Anlass einer italienischenReise" in: Literary Theory and Criticism: Festschrift for
Rer~ Wellek zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Joseph Strelka (Bern: Peter Lang, 1984), I,
631-656, and "Assessing the Assessors: An Anatomy of Comparative Literature
Handbooks" in: Sensus communis: Contemporary Trends in Comparative Litera-
ture, ed. Janos Riesz et al. (Tfibingen:Narr, 1986), pp. 97-113.
io "Lasciate ogni speranza: la letterature comparata alla ricerca di definizioni
perdute" in: Bologna, la cultura italiana e le letterature straniere moderne, ed. Vita
Fortunali (Ravenna:Longo, 1992), II, 43-57. The original English version of this
piece appeared in the Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 37 (1988),
pp. 98-108.
" A recent confession defoi by Professor Maria Moog-Grfinewaldin a letter
addressed to the membersof DGAVLcontainsthe characteristicsentence:"Ich selbst
vemete nach win vor die Position, dass Allgemeineund Vergleichende Literatur-
wissenschaftin ersterLinieeine Philologie,im ganzeneine literaturwissenschaftliche
Disziplinist".
RISEAND FALLOF COMPARATIVELITERATURE 97
vail in the human sciences [...] which rejects the historicism and
nationalism, and even the institutions of literature, as these were
envisaged by the previous paradigm". 12 And, writing in a similar
vein, Susan Bassnett, author of one of the most recent Introduc-
tions, vigorously claims that "Comparative Literature [...] has had
its day"./3
Given this downright anarchic situation, it makes little sense to
expect, or undertake, the construction of a new edifice out of what
are, by now, mere "fragments [...] shored against [the] ruins m4 of
what was once a stately mansion. Is But perhaps this is just another
case of "the Emperor is dead - - long live the Emperor", for, as
history teaches us, while an Emperor's lifespan is clearly limited
and the Emperor, as a person, will never return, institutions have a
way of weathering storms. Indeed, as Wilhelm Pinder has shown
seventy years ago, the historical flux is characterized, among other
things, by a "Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen" (contempora-
neousness of the non-contemporary)16matched, as H. P. H. Teesing
has shrewdly observed, by an equivalent "Ungleichzeitigkeit des
Gleichzeitigen" (non-contemporaneousness of the contemporary).17

I~ I am quotingfrom an unpublishedpositionpaper, co-anthoredby ClausChiever

and CliffordFlanigan,that was read at a meetingof the ACLAheld in March 1986
at the Universityof Michigan in Ann Arbor. The paper is an advanced draft of the
preface to an abortedrevisionof the collectionComparative Literature: Method and
Perspective, ed. Newton P. Stallknechtand Horst Frenz (Carbondale:University of
Southern Illinois Press, 1961 and 1972 respectively)that was aborted.
13 Comparative Literature: A Critical [sic] Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993), p. 161.
14 This is a referenceto T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", 1. 430. It is against such
defeatist notions that Ren~Wellek fulminatesin his contributionto the Festschrift
for A. Owen Aldridge,"The New Nihilismin Literary Studies". See Aesthetics and
the Literature ofldeas, ed. Franfois Jost and Melvin J. Friedman (Newark, Del.:
The Univ. of Delaware Press, 1990), pp. 77-85.
is The parallel suggested by "stately mansion" is that with Edgar Allan Poe's
famous short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher".
16 Das Problem der Generation in der Kunstgeschichte Europas (Berlin:Frank-
furter Verlagsanstalt, 1926).
17 This complementaryconcept was introducedby H. P. H. Teesing in his book
Das Problem der Perioden in der Literaturgeschichte (Groningen:Wolters, 1948).
98 ULRICH WEISSTEIN

So much by way of a preamble; and now on to the pragmatics of

the business at hand. When, several months ago, the editors o f this
prestigious journal asked me to participate in an inquiry aimed at
determining the "place of Comparative Literature in the literary
scholarship of our day" by mulling over questions like "Is the dis-
tinction between literary history, theory of literature and criticism
of literature continuable?", "Where is the place for the 'general'
and for the 'comparative' in it?", and "do these two represent dif-
ferent approaches that can be effective in all three domains of liter-
ary scholarship?") 8 I initially balked at submitting m y unripe
thoughts on this complex subject to public scrutiny but ultimately
decided to take the bull by its horns.
Though with grave mental reservations, I have, accordingly,
whetted my rapier, knowing that, editorial "time's winged chariot m9
being at my back, I would have trouble doing a thorough job, espe-
cially in so far as I neither wanted to kill the animal outright nor let
it roam unchecked in the arena. With all this, and much more, in
mind, I finally decided to structure my argument around three cen-
tral issues by
1. reconsidering the 'name and nature' of Comparative Literature 2~
by scrutinizing the diverse definitions to which the discipline
had been subjected and, while doing so, plot its temporal, spa-
tial and thematic fever charts;
2. briefly analyzing the list of " p o s t m o d e r n " and "anti-post-
modern ''2~ tendencies that is provided in the opening paragraph
o f the letter of invitation; and

~* The letter dates from November 15, 1996.

~9 The reference is to Andrew Marvell's poem "To My Fair Mistress", which
includes the lines "But at my back I always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying
near", alluded to in 1. 196f. of"The Waste Land". The psychologicalpressure which
it exerts starkly contrasts with the persona's stereotypical"There will be time" in the
"Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock".
20 Rent Wellek's essay "The Name and Nature of ComparativeLiterature" origi-
nally appeared in Comparatistsat Work,ed. StephenNichols, Jr., and Richard Vowles
(Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell, 1968) and was reprinted in Discriminations: Further
Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 1-36.
2~ What exactly the editors mean by "antipostmodem" is hard to fathom. The
RISEANDFALLOF COMPARATIVELITERATURE 99
3. reexamining the dialectic of theory (spelled with a lower-
case t) and methodology in the light of a specific set o f reflec-
tions which holds a very special place in the literature on Com-
parative Literature.
In carrying out this program, I shall scrupulously avoid offering
a cut-and-dried answer to the futuroIogical question, for I am no
soothsayer and would hate to be accused of being a false prophet
seeing through a glass darkly. Equally apprehensive of the trumpet
of the Apocalypse sounded by Professors Cluever and FIanigan
and of Jonathan Culler's Utopian vision of a scholarly Paradise
wisely ruled by the champions of Theory (spelled with a capi-
tal T), ~2 1 shall simply speak my mind and let the chips fall where
they may.
What, in effect, one may ask oneself, can be done to battle the
"deconstructive" chaos that threatens to cause the demise o f Com-
parative Literature as a self-supporting enterprise? As will shortly
be seen, the problem is, if only in part, a nomenclatural one; and
the question arises whether the issue could be resolved by means
of the seemingly simple trick of changing the name o f the disci-
pline without affecting its nature. Frankly, I do not think that one
can safely do so, just as I am fully convinced that, in our age of
increasing specialization, a super-discipline like Theory cannot serve
as a cure-all. Another factor which speaks against such a pat, and
inevitably fuzzy, solution is constituted by the historical consid-
eration that Comparative Literature is a magic formula, a flag which,
in the course of a century, has been unfurled all over the globe by

term does not figure in any of the reference works I have consulted but may well
signify a return to Modernism or the avant-garde.
22 In their introduction to The Comparative Perspective on Literature: Ap-
proaches to Theory and Practice (Ithaca:Cornell Univ. Press, 1988), Clayton Koelb
and Susan Noakes signal "Jonathan Culler's contention[...] that the whole of what
the French call the human [shouldbe: the humane]sciences is more or less rapidly
transformed into something called theory, which encompasses not only literary
criticism but also philosophy, history, art history, musicology, architecture, psy=
chology, and social and political theory as well." (6)
1oo ,LR~Ca W~SST~:N
countless academic units, be they departments, Programs, Com-
mittees or research institutes, not to mention the countless under-
graduate and graduate degrees granted, appointments made, na-
tional and international organizations founded, and books and jour-
nals launched.
In short, it is hard to imagine an Academe deprived of this promi-
nent signum. And is one altogether to ignore that there have been
Chairs o f Comparative Literature since 1897 (Lyon), whereas no
one has ever heard of Professors of Literary Theory, much less o f
professors of Russian Formalism, French Strncturalism or German
Rezeptionsiisthetik? There are, to be sure, Schools of Criticism,
such as the famous Kenyon School of English, founded in 1948 but
subsequently transferred to Indiana University, where it was
rechristened The School of Letters. 23 Yet, from an administrative
point of view these entities were never fully integrated into the
University curriculum but were, and are, primarily run as summer
sessions.
Still speaking of names: more feasible but still cumbersome
and unsatisfactory is the divisionary tactic c o m m o n in several coun-
tries, notably Germany, where, for a long time,)isthetik was a highly
respected Fach attached to Philosophy, of using the double desig-
nation "general and comparative". 241 say "unsatisfactory" because
the word "allgemein" as used in the name of the German Compara-
tive Literature Association is appropriate only if one takes it to
mean "pertaining to literary theory" rather than what Van Tieghem
and his followers took it to mean in their Introductions. (It will be
remembered that the Moses of comparatism insisted on its bifurca-
tion into littdrature comparde as the branch concerned with "bi-

23 The New Criticism derives its name from John Crowe Ransom's book by that
title, which was published in 1941. The School ceased to exist as a self-contained
academic unit in 1992. (See the announcementof its disbanding in the Yearbookof
Comparative and GeneralLiterature 21 (1972), p. 102.
24 One might wish to speculate about the positioning of"allgemein" (= general)
and "vergleichend" (= comparative) in the names of the German Comparative Lit-
eraturr Association and of the Indiana University Yearbook...
RISE A N D FALL O F COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 101

nary links between two elements, whether these be individual works

and men or entire literatures", and litt~rature g#n~rale as the com-
plementary branch which investigates "facts common to several
literatures, considered as such, be it in their mutual interdepen-
dence or by analogy (clans leur coincidence)", zs
The other options for pouring old wine into new onomastic bot-
tles which have been proposed over the years fall into three basic
categories. Firstly, and to be rejected out of hand for both logical
and methodological reasons, comes the rather eccentric position
taken, perhaps with tongue-in-cheek, by the Swiss-American scholar
Francois Jost, who repeatedly pleaded for raising Comparative Lit-
erature to the status of a super-science analogous to but no quite as
megalomaniac as Jonathan Culler's excessive claims. It probably
would not be amiss to interpret Jost's pronunciamentos as an over-
reaction to the attempts, made in several quarters, to lower our
discipline to the level of a mere Hilfswissenschaft that could not
stand on its own feet. Whatever the case, Jost published an article
provocatively entitled "'Komparatistik' or 'Absolutistik'?''~6 and
in his booklength Introduction went so far as to assign to Compara-
tive Literature the noble role of being neither more nor less than "a
philosophy of letters, [...] an overall view of literature, [...] a hu-
manistic ecology, a literary Weltanschauung (or even grandilo-
quently) a vision of the cultural universe".27 Such largesse in mat-
ters definitional is clearly out of whack; for what we need is not
obfuscation but clarification of our modus vivendi et operandi.
The second category is symptomatically exemplified in the writ-
ings of Renr Wellek, the final paragraph of whose essay "The Con-
cept of Comparative Literature ''2s opens with the suggestion: "Pos-
sibly it would be best to speak simply of 'literature'" and con-

Cited from the English version,by WilliamRiggan,of my Einfiihrung..., 16.

~6 arcadia 3 (1968), pp. 229-234.
27 Introduction to Comparative Literature (Indianapolis:Bobbs Merrill, 1974),
p. 29.
2s Yearbookof Comparative and General Literature 2 (1953), pp. 1-5.
102 ULRICH WEISSTEIN

cludes with the not so modest proposal: "If we have to keep the
term 'comparative literature', it will simply mean the study of lit-
erature, independently of linguistic distinctions"; for in his view
"literature is one, as art and humanity [sic] are one; and in this
conception lies the future of literary studies" (p. 5). Wellek's call
for the unity of literature and, by extension, that of literary studies
as well did not go unheeded. It gave impetus, for example, to Harry
Levin's presidential address on a theme suggested to him by the
oneiric greeting "we are here to compare the literature" that served
as its anecdotal propellant. 29 In so far as Wellek uses the term Com-
parative Literature not only in its primary sense N that which is
inherent in the French designation littdrature comparde, where the
singular, literature, has been substituted for the intended plural 3~
- - and as the label for an academic subject (Vergleichende Litera-
turwissenschaft) but also, idiosyncratically as a synonym for World
Literature, understood to be the global output of significant bel-
letristic writings, he muddled the issue by levelling the difference
between method and matter.
Wellek's unification of literary science reflects a Utopian wish
by taking polylingualism for granted. For, while Kunstwissenschaft
and Musikwissenschaft are universally viewed as being monolithic
and therefore suitably accommodated in single departments admin-
istering the study of world art and world music respectively,
Literaturwissenschaft is of a different ilk, as it must come to grips
with the diverse Nationalliteraturen that are entrusted to the spe-
cialized philologies? ~ The growing awareness of this split in the
Romantic age of awakening nationalism explains the desire to close

59 "Comparing the Literature", Ibid. 27 (1968), pp. 74--90.

30 There are two Italian equivalents of the French term. either of them reflecting
a different perspective on the subject: letteraturacomparata, on the one hand, and
letterature comparate, on the other.
3~ "Language literature" (Sprachliteratur)would seem to be a better substitute
for Nationalliteratur than the term Einzelliteratur (= individual literature) which
Hugo Dyserinck propagates in his Koraparatistik:EineEinfiihrung(Bonn: Bouvier,
1977).
RISE AND FALL OF COMPARATIVELITERATURE 103

the gaps with the help of a new branch of literary science expressly
created for that purpose. This, at least, is the explanation provided
by Hans Robert Jauss, no friend of Comparative Literature, who
regards it as a Provisorium or, as he blandly puts it, as "ein Fach,
das erfunden werden musste, um das alte bequeme Paradigma der
Nationalhistorie zu sichern, und das die Einzelliteraturen als
Wesenheiten sieht, die unter autochthonen Entwicklungsgesetzen
stehen"? 2 This is a trenchant critique which, rightly or wrongly,
implies that Comparative Literature is dispensible and will sooner
or later vanish from the earth.
More to the point but still precarious on account of the meth-
odological crux which results form the failure to distinguish be-
tween works produced within one language literature and those
written in different tongues - - a distinction firmly rooted in Com-
parative Literature as originally conceived 33 - - is the shift of em-
phasis that results from the substitution of the label Comparative
Literary Studies for the customary designation of the field, such as
is documented in the title of S. S. Prawer's Introduction 34 as well
as, by standard procedure, in the bulk of Marxist manuals. 3s This
solution of the nomenclatural problem strikes me as being sensible
and appropriate in so far as the qualifying noun, Studies, reflects
an overriding concern with method, which the by now stereotypi-
cal "Comparative Literature" does not.

32 "Paradigmenwechsel in der Literaturwissenschaft", Linguistische Berichte 3

(1969), 49, and Hugo Dyserinck's rebuttal.
33 This was not the case with H.M. Posnett, author of Comparative Literature
(London: Kegan Paul, 1886), the first book carrying that title. For the elective New
Zealander insisted: "National literature has been developed from within as well as
influenced from without; and the comparative study of this internal development is of
far greater interest than that of the external, because the former is less a matter of imi-
tation and more an evolution directly dependent on social and physical causes" (81).
Comparative Literary Studies: An Introduction. London: Duckworth, 1973.
35 See, for example, Dion#z ~)urigin, Vergleichende Literaturforschung: Versuch
eines methodisch-theoretischen Grundrisses, tr. Ludwig Richter (Berlin-Ost:
Akademie-Verlag, 1972),Aktuelle Probleme der Vergleichenden Literaturforschung,
ed. Gerhard Ziegengeist (Berlin-Ost: Akademie-Vedag, 1968), and the collection of
essays by Marxist comparatists edited by Gerhard Kaiser. Vergleichende Literatur-
forschung in den sozialistischen Ltindern 1963-1979 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980).
104 ULRICH WEISS'rEIN

In taking this course, Prawer and his colleagues from behind

what was then known as the Iron Curtain emulated a line of thought
that originated with Benedetto Croce without, however, heeding
the latter's warning. For in the face of the evidence which they
themselves brought to bear on the issue, they unabashedly contin-
ued to spawn Introductions cast in the familiar mould, whereas
their "patron saint" persistently refused to sanction Comparative
Literature as a scholarly preserve or academic bailiwick. Thus, in
an article published in his own journal, La critica, Croce stated
emphatically: "Comparative Literature uses the comparative
method. By its very nature as a simple research tool (comparison)
cannot lay claim to delimiting an entire field of specialization". 36
And in a letter addressed to his German colleague Karl Vossler, he
wondered "how a specialty [could] be made of comparative litera-
ture", considering that
jede ernsthafte literarische Untersuchung, jede ersch6pfende kritische Arbeit
wit Notwendigkeit vergleichend sein mtisste, das heisst um die historische
Situation des Kunstwerkes innerhalb der Weltliteratur wissen miisste. 37

Moving from the name of Comparative Literature to its nature

along paths already suggested, I begin by scanning the historical
evolution of our discipline, using as my model the triangular scheme
by means of which the nineteenth-century German novelist and
playwright Gustav Freytag visualized the structure of tragedy in
his once widely used book Die Technik das Dramas. 3s The
"pyramidaler Bau" which he envisaged consists of five Teile or
parts (a-e: Einleitung, Steigerung, Hi~hepunkt, Fall or Umkehr and
Katastrophe) and three Stellen or crises (1-3: erregendes Moment,
tragisches Moment and Moment der letzten Spannung) 39 arranged

36 "La litt#rature compar#e". La Critica 1 (1903), pp. 77-80.

3~ Letter of August 27, 1902, in: Briefwechsel Benedetto C r o c e - Karl Vossler
(Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1955), p. 30.
38 I have used the fifth, improved edition of this book (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1886),
originally published in 1863.
The English equivalents of these terms are given by Marvin Carlson in his
RISE A N D FALL O F COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 105

in such a way as to constitute an upward movement (a-I-b) rising

toward the apex (c) but then quickly descending toward the catas-
trophe (2-d-3-e) in accordance with the following schema:

d 3

This is a graph which easily lends itself to the plotting of his-

torical processes in many fields, whether political, social, economic
or cultural, in a fixed and seemingly timeless pattern. In literature,
for instance, it can be used to describe the growth of movements on
their way toward becoming dominant period styles characterized
by a recognizable system of norms or regulative ideas, as well as
of their inevitable decline. 4~ This is also a suitable approach for
marking the major stations in the life of Comparative Literature
and charting the course of its progress and subsequent regression.
After a very extended prehistory (= Einleitung) entailing some false
starts and misguided efforts, one can easily spot the e r r e g e n d e s
M o m e n t in Fernand Baldensperger's seminal essay in the first is-
sue of the R e v u e de Litt~rature Compar~e. +~ What followed was a
protracted Steigerung which, a stable platform having been reached
with the appearance of Paul Van Tieghem's manual, attained its
peak (Hi~hepunkt) in a lustrum mirabilis (1967-1973) that saw the
publication of Introductions galore in several tongues.

survey Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to
the Present (Ithaca: CornellUniv. Press, 1984) 258f.
4o See Wellek' s definifion of a (literary) pedod in Wellek and Warren, Theory of
Literature (New York: HarcourtBrace, 1949), p. 277.
4~ "Litt6raturecompar~e:le mot et la chose". RLC 1 (1921), pp. 5-29.
I06 ULRICH WE1SSTEIN

The irreversible Fall or Umkehr, without a visible tragisches

Moment, that set in approximately in the mid-seventies is closely
linked to the massive appearance on the literary scene of new criti-
cal and theoretical movements, first in France and subsequently
throughout Europe and the United States. It was precisely then that
the solid structure erected by Van Tieghem began to crumble, after
first having been weakened by the injection of foreign bodies
(FremdkOrper) into its architectural substance.
Thus, to adduce but two examples of such undermining: in the
first edition of their Introduction, Pichois/Rousseau included a chap-
ter, somewhat fashionably entitled "Structuralisme litttraire" but
actually a hodgepodge of loosely connected features, 42 which in
subsequent editions was replaced by a chapter innocuously labelled
"Pottique". And, on the other shore of the Atlantic, Alan F. Nagel,
reviewing the English version of my Einfiihrung .... took me to task
by posing the rhetorical question:
Would it be too much to expect mention of one or two [sic] of the names of
Richards, Levi-Strauss, Crane, Poulet, Booth, Barthes, Sebeok and Gold-
mann743

These examples may well be regarded as fixating the M o m e n t

der letzten Spannung in the history of Comparative Literature in its
classical phase, for while Pichois/Rousseau and Nagel still seem
to entertain the notion that the two paradigms, Comparative Litera-
ture and Theory, might be compatible, Peter V. Zima, writing in
1992, has moved beyond this horizon by simply ordaining, "die
Komparatistik soll(t)e sich auf das Programm der frfihen Kritischen
Theorie besinnen und versuchen, sozialwissenschaftliche Metho-

42 The chapter is subdivided into sections entitled th#matologie,morphologie,

esth~tique de la traduction and structures permanentes et variantes particuli}res
respectively.
,3 Nagel's reviewappearedin the Working Papers of the Minnesota Center for
Advanced Studies in Language, Style and Literary Theory, spring, 1974.
RISE AND FALL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 107

dologie mit philosophischer Reflexion zu kombinieren" (italics by

the author, P. V. Z.), 44 as if this were the ultima ratio.
Already in the late eighties, however, the final leg of the falling
action, in which the writing of Introductions to Comparative Lit-
erature fell into disgrace among the cognoscenti, was reached. It
was hardly by chance that precisely at that point a pair each of
American and French scholars brought out collections of essays b y
various hands and, in so doing, tacitly admitted that the time for
presenting authoritative surveys of our field was, once and for all,
gone. Thus, in the preface to their jointly edited volume Clayton
Koelb and Susan Noakes frankly admitted their failure to find a
c o m m o n denominator:

It was our sense that earlier studiesdesignedto providean introductionto the

discipline no longer accuratelyrepresented what people associated with the
field are currentlydoing.We felt, however,that what was needed was not yet
anotherprescriptivebookenumeratingthe kindsof studyin whichcomparatists
engage. More interesting and useful, it seemed to us, would be a volume
exemplifyingwhat comparatists actuallydo.'~

In so arguing, they put the cart before the horse; for how can
one recognize a comparatist without reference to a consensus defi-
nition of his field?
In a similar vein but, in the French tradition of Comparative
Literature, somewhat more apologetically, Pierre Brunel and Yves
Chevrel, co-editors of a Prdcis de Littdrature Comparde, defined
their selection criteria as follows:

Tel qu'il, est, ce Precis comportedes lacunes,dont nous sommes conscients.

Nous n'avons pas eu la pr6tentionde presenter, dans des domaines oh la
recherche est en pleineexpansion,tantbtdes ~tatpr~'sents,des travanxr6cents,
tant6t des aper~us sur un genre, ou une ~poque, tant6t des perspectives de
recherche?6

Komparatistik: Einfiihrung in die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

(Tiibingen:Francke, 1992), 5f.
45 The Comparative Perspectiveon Literature (fn. 2t)~ 3.
~6 Paris: Presses Universitairesde France, 1989,9. I have reviewedthis volume
in Arcadia 26 (1991), pp. 322-326.
108 ULRICH WEISSTE1N

Arguing that 'Tunit6 est dans le multiple", they justified the

abdication of their editorial responsibilities by stating:
Chaque auteur a eu la pleine responsabilit~de son texte, et nous n'avons
veill6 qu'une uniformisation[...] de la pr6sentation typographique.

Oh, what a falling-off was there!

Surely, if no universally accepted definition of a Fach exists,
the center can no longer hold and things are likely to fall apart. 47 At
the moment immediately preceding catastrophe, the scholarly
G#nerdammerung of our discipline, the permanent crisis of Com-
parative Literature appears to have given way to total chaos. As
the leftwing French scholar/critic Didier Naud discerned as early
as 1971: "Elle poss~de la particularit6 d'etre dans la division des
lettres la discipline ou r~gne le plus grand confusionnisme".48 These
are harsh words indeed; but by a curious twist not unfamiliar to the
historiographer, Comparative Literature is still alive, though per-
haps not kicking, and more or less conventional Introductions are
still being written. 49
What one may call the spatio-temporal thematic range of the
specific areas of study admitted to the inner sanctum of Compara-
tive Literature in its rocky and, sometimes, turbulent history might
well be imaged in the form of a pulsating heart with a rhythmical
beat alternating between systole (contraction) and diastole (expan-
sion). In this particular case, however, the rhythm of these comple-
mentary movements is decidedly erratic, as the expansions far out-
number the contractions, which may be taken either as a sign of
continual good health or as a token of instability. Almost in the
cradle, for instance, the growth of our discipline was checked by

4~ Thisis an allusionto a famousline in W. B. Yeats' poem "The Second Com-

ing" from the collectionMichael Robartes and the Dancer of 1921.
4s Quotedin Bmnel/Pichois/Rousseau,Qu'est-ce clue la littdrature compar~e?
(Pads: Colin, 1983),7, fromNaud'sreviewarticle"Lia6raturecompar~e:Sur quelques
contradictions d'un manuel d'orientation". In: Litt#rature/Science/Iddologie, pp.
42-48.
49 See,forexample, lVfiroslavBeker'sUvodukomparativnuknji~evnost(Zagreb:
Skolska Knjiga, 1995).
RISE AND FALL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 109

the resolute casting off of Folklore, its originally symbiotic partner

given its full due in the earliest bibliographies. But thereafter the
additions to its officially or unofficially sanctioned corpus came
hard and fast until the point at which the proverbial sponge was
soaked and in urgent need of being squeezed dry again was reached.
This rampant Imperialism of Comparative Literature 5~ has mani-
fested itself in more ways than can be conveniently listed, much
less commented upon, in the space at my disposal. Rather than
getting embroiled in yet another controversy about the applicabil-
ity of Feminism, Marxism, "Comparative Literature in the Post-
Colonial Wodd" or the "Politics of Travellers' Tales", sl I shall
therefore content myself with listing some of the major accretions
without dwelling on any of the numerous modifications and
regurgitations.
On the methodological scene, for instance, one notes an
inclusionary tendency which, supplementing reception with influ-
ence in a second phase, ultimately condones, if not always approv-
ing, parallels and analogies as well. A veritable crossroads was
finally reached when, subverting the notion of Beziehung, as it is
popularly held, began to be supplanted by the privileging ofalterity
and relationship by contrast (Anderssein and Gegensiitzlichkeit)
as acceptable modes. 52
The chronological range of the domain to be administered by
Comparative Literature gradually outgrew the narrow confines to
which it was initially restricted, i.e., the Modem Age beginning
with the Renaissance and, for all practical purposes, ending with
thefin-de-si~cle. In due course, it began to wrench Graeco-Roman

50 Regardingthis issue, see the intertexmallyorientedessayby Ernest B. Gilman,

"Interart Studies and the Imperialismof Language". PoeticsToday 10 (1989), pp.
5-30.
sl The latter two formulations serve as chapter headings in Susan Bassnett's
book (fn. 13).
5~ By definition, critical approachesthat are whollywerkimmanent,such as the
position taken by the more dogmatic practitioners of the New Criticism, are not
comparativein the acceptedsense.
110 ULRICH WEISSTE1N

literature away from the classical philologists who, for time imme-
morial, had been its trusted guardians, and encroached upon the
territory hitherto reserved for Medievalists, s3 while extending its
scholarly activities to the twentieth century as well. The correspond-
ing spatial, i.e., geographical, widening of scope resulted, first, in
the comparative treatment of Western literatures in relation to non-
Western ones - - and then, by logical extension, to the study of
non-Western literatures among each other? 4 On still other fronts,
the octopus which is Comparative Literature used its ever agile
tentacles to hug, but hopefully not smother, oral literature ss and
ultimately turned its loving attention to the most genuinely com-
parative of all intra-literary subjects, i.e., translation. 56
Moving beyond the borders of the already vast province of let-
ters, it also extended its feelers to the linkages between literature
and the other arts in the Musaion but, fortunately, held its breath
when it came to ciaiming jurisdiction over Esthetics and the wech-
selseitige Erhellung der Kiinste literally understood. It further ad-
vanced to the exploration of the ties between literature and the
(other) media (radio, film, TV) s7 and, at the end of its long day's
journey, altogether shedding whatever modesty was left, took a
crack at the sciences as well. Thus, in a highly controversial, deft-

s3 See especially Jean Frappier's pioneering paper, "Litt&atures m6di6vales et

lin6rature compar6e: Probl~mes de recherche et de m6thode" in the Proceedings of
the Second ICLA Congress (Chapel Hill, N. C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press,
1959) I, pp. 25-35.
In this case the pioneer is Ren~ Efiemble, the b~te noire of French-style
littdrature compar3e. A good case in point, as far as the two branches of compara-
tive scholarship involving non-Western literatures are concerned, is the volume Eu-
ropean Language Writing in Subsaharan Africa which Albert G~rard edited for the
Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (Budapest: Akad6miai
Kiad6, 1986).
s~ This happened most spectacularly at the Fifth ICLA Congress held in Bel-
grade (1967), that is to say, in the country where Milman Perry and Albert Lord had
studied the Serbian oral epic.
s6 The founders of Comparative Literature in France, beginning with Paul Van
Tiegbem, had shown some interest in translators but not in translation.
5~ At the Institut ftir Anglistik of the Karl-Franzens-Universititt Graz, Professor
Walter Bemhan currently heads a "Department of Literature and the (Other) Media".
RISE A N D FALL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 111

nition of the range of our scholarly expertise ("Comparative Lit-

erature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particu-
lar country, and the study of the relationships between literature on
the one hand and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the
arts .... philosophy, history and the social sciences, the sciences,
religion, etc., on the other"Ss), Henry H. H. R e m a k overstepped the
bounds and was severely criticized by R e n t Wellek, w h o m the
scheme struck as one
devised for purely practical purposes in an American graduate school, where
you may have to justify a thesis topic as 'comparative literature' before un-
sympathetic colleaguesresenting incursions into their particular fields of com-
petence .59

Regarding the next item on my agenda, namely, the promised

analysis of the list of "new possibilities for literary comparatism"
comprising "hermeneutics, deconstructivism, new historicism,
empirical literary scholarship [sic], theory of interpretative com-
munities, and so on", which, as the qualifier at its conclusion indi-
cates, is distinctly of the random sort, one could well argue that,
given the purpose of the editorial letter, this is an excellent tactical
move in so far as it is precisely its gratuity which teases the read-
er's mind and arouses in him the creative spirit of contradiction.
Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that this mini-
catalogue is no microcosm in which the macrocosm of m o d e m
literary theory, which lies at the heart of the whole enterprise set in
motion by Professors Szabolcsi and Vajda, is fully reflected.
There are two observations which suggest themselves upon
closer inspection of the list: firstly, that the links which make up
this fragmentary chain are, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
different; and, secondly, that the list, even if it covered all the basic
elements in the starry sky of m o d e m theory, would be defective

ss "Comparative Literature: Its Definition and Function" in Stallknecht/Frenz

(fn. 12), p. 3.
59 "The Name and Nature of Comparative Literature" (fn. 20), p. 18.
112 ULRICH WEISSTEIN

insofar as countless combinations and recombinations of these build-

ing blocks could be envisaged, thereby enhancing its eclecticism.
Concerning the first objection, it is easy to see that the five "possi-
bilities" are by no means equivalent in significance and scale but
form a hierarchy of large, medium-sized and small phenomena rang-
ing all the way from a comprehensive Weltanschauung (decon-
struction) to a notion-turned-technical term (interpretative c o m m u -
nities), with two Schools (New Historicism and Empirische Lite-
raturwissenschaft) and a technique (hermeneutics) constituting an
intermediary layer.
As for the second point, one single example should suffice to
show the relevance of my critique. In the Encyclopedia of Contem-
porary Literary Theory, 6~the most comprehensive reference work
of its kind, the description of the phenomenon covered in the entry
"Empirical Literary Science/Constructivist Theory of Literature"
reads, in part, as follows:

[It] is related to other systemic approaches. These can be grouped into com-
munication theories (including semiotics)and the sociology of literature. His-
torically, the former includes the approaches of the Russian Formalists, the
Prague School and more recent polysystem theory. [...] The sociology of
literature group [...] includes thechamplitt~raireapproach,[...] sociocriticism
and the ~cole bibliologiqueand l'institution litt~raire approach. (37)

Here the polysystem theory is presented as part of a larger

polysystem; and what a nest of Babuschkas that is! Confusion
abounds, but that is hardly surprising; for how can one expect a
booklength summa of concepts, names, and terms 6~ arranged in al-
phabetical order to make do for a historical and truly critical sur-
vey in which all features are seen in relation to each other as form-
ing a global network? Unfortunately, such an effort has not as yet

6o Edited by Irene R. Makaryk, the book was published in 1993 by the Univer-
sity of Toronto Press.
61 The three subdivisionsof this volumeare entitled "Approaches,Scholars (and)
Terms" respectively.
RISE A N D FALL O F COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 113

been undertaken, whether individually or collectively .62 This poses

a grave dilemma that may never be resolved; for it is futile to hope
for a latterday W e l l e k writing an authoritative History o f M o d e m
Theory (in how many volumes?).
The difficulties to be overcome by anyone brave enough to frame
an answer to the kind of editorial questions raised are further c o m -
pounded by the uncertainty which surrounds the meaning o f the
expression "in our days". Is it meant to be synonymous with "con-
temporary"? A n d exactly what does "contemporary " m e a n ? This
is, at best, a slippery question. Faced with it, the editor o f the Ency-
clopedia offers the following apology:

At the core of this volume is the attempt to delineate the different kinds of
approaches and schools since New Criticism, that is, the trends, tendencies
and critics who have commanded attention over the past fifty years. Yet many
of these approaches are grounded in earlier theoretical work. For this reason,
a number of precursors appear in this volume [...] and a number of schools,
such as the Neo-Aristotelians,the Russian formalists, the Prague School. (vii)

Confronted with all these Gordian knots, the poor scholar ex-
pected to let his w i s d o m shine might well succumb to suicidal de-
spondency unless, a veritable Alexander of C o m p a r a t i v e Litera-
ture, he could bring himself to cut them all, regardless o f the con-
sequences. W h i l e we are waiting for the arrival on the scene o f
such a brutal hero o f heroes we can either side with those col-
leagues who believe, with the administrators o f the Austrian State
Lotteries, that "everything goes" or with the dogmatists who w o u l d
like to legislate what we can or cannot do qua comparatists, and
even whether, and at what point, we should liquidate our m o r i b u n d
institution.

~2 This stricture applies to all the pertinent volumes in English which I have
consulted in preparing this essay. They include D. W. Fokkema and Elrud Kunne-
Ibsch, Theories of Literature in the Twentieth Century: Structuralism, Marxism,
Aesthetics of Reception, Semiotics (London: Hurst, 1977), Terry Eagleton, Literary
Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), as well as Jeremy Hawthorn's
Concise Glossary of Contemporary Theory (London: Arnold, 1994 and 21996), an-
other dictionary.
114 ULRICH WEISS'rEIN

This, however, cannot be the last word regarding the matter at

hand; for if one wishes to be serious in coping with the editorial
inquiry about the ~tat present and the future prospects of Compara-
tive Literature, one is bound to scan the whole spectrum of activi-
ties proper to a discipline which, like Literaturwissenschafl in gen-
eral, naturally subdivides itself into History, Theory, and Criticism. 63
"Biographically", Comparative Literary History, more descriptive
than evaluative and moving, at least initially, in the shadow of posi-
tivism, constituted the Urgestalt oflitt#rature compar~e as preached
and practiced by Van Tieghem. In its wake, though rather belat-
edly, Comparative Criticism, championed by John Fletcher and
Joseph Strelka, among others,64 made its entrance and enjoyed a
brief vogue of popularity in scholarly circles. But it left no perma-
nent mark on the establishment, mainly, one suspects, because its
advocates failed to draw a clear line of demarcation between criti-
cism and theory. Understood in purely pragmatic terms, however,
it has been, and will be, with us for as long a time as such compara-
tive pairings as Lessing and Diderot, A. W. Schlegel and Madame
de Stall, or Matthew Arnold and Francesco De Sanctis command
our scholarly attention.
Like Comparative Literary Criticism, its sibling, Comparative
Literary Theory, may be viewed from various perspectives. O n o n e
level of discourse, for instance, it might legitimately take the form
of comparisorrs between literary theories, or bodies of theory, origi-
nating in different language literatures. Such, at least, is the mean-
ing and function w.hk:h Bernhard F. Scholz assigned to it in a brief

63 ChapterlII ofTheoryofLiterature(fn. 40)isentitled"Literary Theory, Criti-

cism, and History".
See Jotm Fletcher, "The C~iticismof Comparison: The Approachthrough
Comparaa~iveLiteratureand:IntellectualHistory"in: Contemporary Criticism, ed.
Malcolm Bradburyand David Palmer(London:Arnold, 1970), pp. 107-129, and
Joseph Stretka, Vergleichende Literaturkritik (Bern: Francke, 1970), pp. 5-34.
Symptomatically,the officialorgan of the British ComparativeLiteratureAssocia-
tion is calledComparative.Criticism:A Yearbook.
RISE AND FALL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 115

disquisition entitled "Comparing Theories of Literature? ''65 Scholz

was inspired to write this canstic piece by the "New Task Descrip-
tion of the ICLA" m thus its subtitle - - which the Executive Com-
mittee of the Association, having framed the text in the course of
many arduous working sessions, presented to the membership at
the Innsbruck Congress, where it was voted on and duly approved.
In the unofficial English version, the key sentence of this fun-
damental declaration of intention reads as follows:
The International ComparativeLiterature Association aims to develop the
study of ComparativeLiterature,which includesthe study of literaryhistory,
literary theory, and text interpretation [presumablyinvolving literary criti-
cism], undertaken from an international comparativepoint of view:~6

As one who participated in the deliberations, I can verify that

the wording finally arrived at was a somewhat half-hearted com-
promise struck between the representatives of two factions, one of
them conservative and the other "progressive". As such, it is, not
surprisingly, ambiguous - - quite apart from the fact that it is also
incomplete, since it excludes all intermedial activities, such as the
study of "Literature and the Other Arts", which, paradoxically,
served as one of the major themes of the Congress. What, in scru-
tinizing the above statement, strikes the reader as tautological and,
accordingly, as being a bone of contention is the concluding phrase,
"undertaken from an international comparative point of view" with
its apparently missing comma; for, semantically, "comparative"
would seem to imply "international", while "international" may,
but need not, imply "comparative". Whatever may have been the
true aims of the Executive Committee, reading between the lines
one comes away with the impression that here, at the expense of
Comparative Literature in the familiar sense, a lance is being bro-
ken for Theory, whether comparative or not.

Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 28 (1979), pp. 26--30.

As quoted by Scholz (fn. 65), p. 29.
116 ULRICH WEISSTEIN

To wind up the argument here presented: there is still another

relevant problem that was, unfortunately, slighted in the updated
description of the ICLA's goals and purposes, namely that of meth-
odology and its position in relation to theory and praxis. This is the
topic to which the late Erwin Koppen addressed himself in a paper
entitled "Hat die Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft eine eigene
Theorie?" and read at the first meeting of the DGAVL. ~7 In this
shrewdly argued and wholesome though conservative essay, Koppen
defends Comparative Literature, as a relational but unified disci-
pline, against all attempts to split it into two halves - - emission
and reception studies - - by reassigning each of these to the aca-
demic Fach charged with administering the study of a given na-
tional literature.6s
An inter-discipline like Comparative Literature, Koppen insists,
must justify its existence by focusing on its role as a mediatrix
within the parameter of binary, ternary, etc., relations and as an
intermediary between theory and praxis. It thus has a vital, though
from the standpoint of the national philologies subsidiary, func-
tion, which keeps it from constructing its own theory (meaning: a
system built upon "general and abstract principles ''69 of its own).

67 Zur Theorie der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Horst Rtidiger

(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971), p. 41, 64.
See, in this regard, the following passage from Julius Petersen's lecture
"Nationale oder vergleichende Literaturgeschichte?", Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift
fiir Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 6 (1928):
" W o e s sich um Bewegungen handelt, die jedesmal von einem produktiven zu
einem rezeptiven Faktor hinfiihren, kann das Interesse der Beobachtung nur auf der
rezeptiven Seite liegen. Der produktive Faktor ist bekannt und vermag durch
Feststellung seiner Femwirkung kanm irgendwelche neuen Wesensziige zu enthtillen;
die Art und Weise der Wirkung, die er entwickelt, muB dagegen fiir die Wesensart
des aufnehmenden Teiles charakteristische Aufschliisse erbringen." (46)
69 This definition is culled from the 1949 edition of Webster's New Collegiate
Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam). Koppen's sentiment is echoed in the sec-
tion "Avenir d'une discipline" of Yves Chevrel's book La littdrature compar#e (Paris:
"Le comparatisme, a-t-il une th6orie qui lui soit propre? l...l U ne semble pas I.--]
que les comparatistes soient en 6tat, actuellement de proposer une theorie de la
litt6rature. [...] Mais s'il n'y a pas de th6orie de l'objet ~tudi6, yen a-t-il une du mode
d'6tude lui-m~me? Les comparatistes pr6f6ront sans doute parler de m6thode." (119)
RISE A N D FALL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 117

Instead, by way of compensation, it compels its practitioners to

develop flexible strategies designed in such a way as to enable
them to deal successfully with the whole range of intertextual (and,
by extension, intermedial) linkages. Precisely that, however, is the
task of methodology, understood as a body o f techniques and pro-
cedures suited for the kind of investigation that is proper to a given
science. 7~ In the case of Comparative Literature, the science here
under discussion, it goes almost without saying that the privileged
research tool will be comparison (Vergleich) concerned with both
contactual and non-contactual relations (Beziehungen). vl
If one wishes to cast our tripartite scheme o f (Vergleichende)
Literaturwissenschaft into an image, the wheel would seem to be
the most suitable kind of illustration, with literature, as the object
of study, forming the hub, theory the rim, and methodology the
spokes connecting the two and thus making it possible for the wheel
to spin around and propel the vehicle forward. What is wanted,
then, is not a hierarchical structure privileging any of these con-
ceptually separate but practically interwoven parts but the realiza-
tion, on the researcher's part, that neither can function without the
others. Professor Koppen has therefore a point when reminding us
that literary theory is

kein reines Glasperlenspiel, das man aus der Freude an der Abstraktion, der
Deduktion und Spekulation treibt, sondern sie wird erst dort interessant, wo
sie anwendbar wird, wo sie in Methodologie iibergeht. (57)

Shifting, with him, from the scholarly to the psychological track,

we may wish to take into account Koppen's explanation for the
intensity with which today's comparatists train their eyes on Theory:

70 This definition is a modified version of the pertinent entry in Webster'sNew

Collegiate Dictionary.
71 There is no ground for changing the opinion, which I have repeatedly voiced
in the last two decades, that there exists a vast gap, if not a total vacuum, with regard
to this all-important research.
118 ULRICH WEISSTEIN

Bis heute leidet die VergleichendeLiteraturwissenschaftunter dem Komplex,

sie spiele, im Grunde genommen,in den PhilosophischenFakult~ten die Rolle
des 'Zugroasten', den die Einheimischen mit scheelen Blicken verfolgen und
(lessen Niederlassungs- und Existenzrecht sie grunds~itzlichin Frage stellen
m0chten. Diese Situationzwingtnun gleichsamdie Komparatistenaller Herren
Ltinder dazu, dutch sttindige theoretische Bcmtihungen und methodische
Reflexionen die Autonomie und Existenzberechtigung ihrcr Disziplin immer
von ncuem unter Bewcis zu stellen. (48)

There is, surely, more than a grain o f truth in these remarks. To

the extent that such behavior may be called pathological, it brings
to mind the cruel barb which the Austrian satirist, Karl Kraus is
said to have aimed at psycho-analysis: that it is the disease which
it pretends to cure. But to be fair, and to redress the balance, one
must admit that where the Theory freaks have done too much, the
M e t h o d o l o g y freaks, few and far between, have done too little for
Comparative Literature.