Modern Language Association

Comparative Literature?
Author(s): David Damrosch
Source: PMLA, Vol. 118, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 326-330
Published by: Modern Language Association
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theories and
methodologies
Comparative
Literature?
DAVID DAMROSCH
DAVID DAMROSCH is professorof English
and comparativeliteratureat Columbia
Universityand president of the Ameri-
can ComparativeLiteratureAssociation.
He is the author of TheNarrativeCove-
nant (Harper,1987),WeScholars:Chang-
ing the Cultureof the University(Harvard
UP,1995),Meetingsof the Mind (Prince-
ton UP,2000), and WhatIs WorldLitera-
ture?(PrincetonUP,forthcoming)and of
articleson ancient,medieval,and mod-
ern literatureand theory. He is also the
general editor of TheLongmanAnthol-
ogy of BritishLiterature(2nd ed., 2002)
and of TheLongmanAnthologyof World
Literature(forthcoming).
326
PMLA
IN RECENTYEARS,NORTHAMERICANLITERARY
STUDIESHAS
BEENMARKEDBYA DOUBLEMOVEMENT:
OUTWARDFROMTHE
Euro-Americansphere toward the entire globe and inward within na-
tional traditions, in an intensified engagement with local cultures and
subcultures.Both directionsmight seem naturalstimuli to comparative
study-most obviously in the transnationalframe of global studies but
also in more local comparisons:a naturalway to understandthe distinc-
tiveness of a given culture,afterall, is to compareit with and contrastit
to others. Yetjournal articles andjob listings alike have not shown any
majorgrowthin comparativeemphasisin recentyears.Is the comparatist
doomedto irrelevance,less equippedthanthe nationalspecialistfor local
study and yet findingthe literaryglobe expandingfartherand fartherout
of reach,accessible only to a multitudeof, again,local specialists?
The specter of amateurismhauntscomparativeliteraturetoday. As
formalistapproacheshave waned, scholarshave found so much to learn
aboutthe full outlinesof individualculturesthatthey have often preferred
delving deeply into one time and place over pursuingbroad-basedcom-
parisons.Formuchof the twentiethcentury,comparatistsstakedout a dis-
tinct middle groundin betweenthe nationalliteraturesandthe vast space
of the full globe, most often concentratingon the majorliterarytraditions
of westernEuropeas a graspablegroundof internationalcomparison.As
literary studies has begun to wake from its long Eurocentricslumber,
though,this middle groundhas faded in importance,as has comparative
literature'srelatedadvantagesince the 1970s in the import-exporttradein
Europeanliterarytheory.Todaymuchtheoryis homegrown,and "travel-
ing theory"circulateslargely in translation,its concepts andtexts seem-
ingly usable without special regard to their time and place of origin,
therebyundercuttinga specialrole for comparativeliteraturein theoretical
work(Said, "TravellingTheory"and"TravellingTheoryReconsidered").
In principle,the growingemphasison worldliteratureprovidesa new
venue for comparativestudy.Yetpostcolonialandglobal studiestoday-
focusing on issues of transmissionand adaptationwithina linguisticnet-
work like those of francophoneor global English literature-are often
I ? 2003 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
I 8.2 ] David Damrosch
hardlyless monolingualthanmost studies of na-
tional traditions. Literaturesoutside the major
colonial traditionscontinueto be studiedmostly
by specialists who have devoteddecadesto their
chosen languages and cultures. Excellent com-
parativework is being done in such areas (e.g.,
Sheldon Pollock on Indianvernacularsand Ste-
ven Venturinoon Tibetanpostmodernism),and
yet such venturesomework is still the exception
ratherthan the rule, and it underscoresthe diffi-
culty of doing serious work on a truly global
basis. Lackinga deep knowledge of more thana
few cultures,are comparatistsconstrainedeither
to stay within a limited range of material or to
succumb to a kind of scholarly tourism? The
prominentcomparatistA. Owen Aldridge used
this analogyquitepositivelytwentyyearsago:
In the days of exploration,it wouldhavebeen
impossiblefor any single Europeannavigator
to coverin a lifetimethe entiregeographicex-
panseof the two Americancontinents,but in
thetwentiethcenturyanytouristcanvisitbyjet
airplaneall of the majorcentersof population
in three or four months.We may hope for a
similarfutureprogresstowarduniversalcover-
age in the studyof literature. (1)
We need a better model today than literaryjet-
setting if we are to develop comparativestudies
adequate to the scope of the materials now
available for comparison. Comparativelitera-
ture can thrive in the coming years, but only
through a renewed engagement with national
traditionsand with global contexts. Here I will
discuss our problems and our options under
three rubrics:nationalinternationalism,cultural
translation,and specializedgeneralism.
National Internationalism
As a discipline, comparativeliteraturearose in a
kind of competitive symbiosis with the nation-
alisms dominantin nineteenth-centuryEurope.
While some comparatistsstudiedthe interactions
of nationaltraditions,otherssaw the nation-state
327
as destined, like capitalism, to wither away in a
few decades. This is the perspective that Marx So
and Engels endorsed in the CommunistMani-
festo of 1847, where they followed Goethe in _.
proclaiming the rise of world literature as the
culturalmirrorof a postnationalworld:
et
Thebourgeoisiehasthroughits exploitationof
theworldmarketgivena cosmopolitancharac- 0
o.
ter to productionand consumptionin every 0
country.Tothegreatchagrinof reactionaries it t/
06
has drawnfromunderthe feet of industrythe Q.
nationalgroundon which it stood. All old-
u*
establishednationalindustrieshave been de-
stroyedor are daily being destroyed.... In
placeof theoldlocalandnationalseclusionand
self-sufficiency,we haveintercoursein every
direction,universalinterdependence of nations.
Andas in material,so also in intellectualpro-
duction.Nationalone-sidednessandnarrow-
mindedness becomemoreandmoreimpossible,
andfromthenumerousnationalandlocallitera-
tures,therearisesa worldliterature. (421)
The seductive lure of "intercoursein every di-
rection"became the norm in postwarAmerica.
The comparatistsof the 1950s saw the field of
world literatureas the grand successor to "the
nationalisticheresy,"as Albert Guerardput it in
a lead article in the Yearbookof Comparative
and GeneralLiteraturein 1958. Looking ahead
to European unification, Guerard anticipated
that "ComparativeLiteraturewill disappearin
its very victory;just as 'foreign trade' between
Franceand Germanywill disappearin the Com-
mon Market;just as the 'foreign relations' be-
tween these two countrieswill be absorbedby a
common parliament"(4). For Guerard,the over-
riding question in 1958 was, "How and when
shall we commit suicide?" His answer: "Not
just yet: we are needed so long as the nationalis-
tic heresy has not been extirpated"(5).
We can no longer proceed as though this
heresy is aboutto disappear.The EuropeanPar-
liament in Brussels is unlikely to supplantEu-
rope'snationalgovernmentsduringourlifetimes,
and in an academiccontext the greatmajorityof
 328 ComparativeLiterature?
tA
4u
teachersand scholarsof literaturecontinueto be
based in departmentsorganized along national
0
lines. Whatdoes the ongoing vitality of national
*0
0
0 literarytraditionsmean for the understandingof
world literature?Much recent literarystudy,in-
E spiredby figureslike Foucaultand Said, takes a
IC dim view of nationalistideologies and imperial
c enterprises,andyet in an odd way the critiqueof
nationalism has turnedout to coexist comfort-
4)
ably with a continuingnationalismin academic
0
w practice.The moreone needs to know,say, about
.C
the courts of Queen Elizabethand King JamesI
to understandShakespeare,the less time one has
available to learn about the cultural underpin-
nings of Frenchdramaor Greektragedy,andone
tendsto downplaywhatone doesn'tknow.
Moving beyond a regionally linked set of
traditions is harder still. The more committed
today's Shakespeareansbecome to understand-
ing literaturewithin culturalcontext-at times,
almost as a function of cultural context-the
less likely they are to feel comfortable in com-
paring Shakespeareand Kalidasa.Indeed, even
in a single region a range of disparateliteratures
can seem too daunting to tackle. Several years
ago I was on a searchcommitteelooking to hire
a medievalist;one of the hottesttopics we found
among our applications was the origins of na-
tionalism in the medieval kingdoms that were
struggling for mastery in the British Isles. The
severalwritingsamples on aspects of this theme
all took a critical attitude toward the efforts of
the Anglo-Saxons and then Anglo-Normans to
promote themselves culturallyand extend their
sway politically, and yet none of these scholars
was doing any work in Irish or Welsh literature.
Not on principle,no doubt, since the richnessof
both traditionsin the medieval period is widely
recognized:the medievalistssimply had not had
time to learn those languages along with every-
thing else they were studying.Insteadof includ-
ing materialthey could read only in translation
and withouta close culturalknowledge,they left
it out of account altogether. Yet works like the
Irish Tainand the WelshMabinogiare full of in-
[PMLA
terestfor explorationsof culturalidentity,while
poets like Dafydd ap Gwilym have fascinating
satirical things to say about Anglo-Saxons and
Anglo-Normansalike. Deconstructingnational-
ism in theory,these medievalistshad succumbed
to it in practice.
The point of this example is a double one:
more than ever, serious study of national tradi-
tions can benefitfroma multilingualandcompar-
ativeperspective;conversely,comparativestudy
must engage directly and affirmativelywith na-
tionaltraditions,which arehardlyaboutto wither
away.Nationalismandinternationalismareinex-
tricablyintertwinedtoday,to theirmutualbenefit.
Cultural Translation
Throughoutthe twentiethcentury,comparatists
tended to assume that nations were ephemeral
but languages were eternal.Thoughnineteenth-
centuryscholarslike HutchesonMacaulayPos-
netthad often workedcomfortablyin translation,
comparativeliteratureconsolidatedits base insti-
tutionallyaroundromancephilology andcompa-
rablefields of study,like classics and East Asian
studies. As a result, translated works were no
longer thought to be available as objects for
scholarly study, and comparatistsperforce ne-
glected what they could not readin the original.
Comparativestudy became institutionallybifur-
cated:worldliteraturemightbe taughtin transla-
tion to undergraduates, but graduatestudentsand
scholars were expected to focus on what they
could read in the original. Adventurouspeople
might venturebeyond the boundariesof western
Europe,into Slavic studies or "East-West"com-
parative studies, but any given scholar's range
was sharply delimited by whatever languages
there was "worldenough and time" to study, to
recall the line from MarvellthatErichAuerbach
used as his regretfulepigraphto Mimesis.
To thrive today, comparative study must
embracetranslationfar more actively thanit did
duringthe past century.We can studytexts fruit-
fully in good translationsso long as we attendto
I I 8.2 2
the culturalcontexts from which they come. An
older comparatismoften centered on philologi-
cally based modes of interpretation,such as that
advocatedby Leo Spitzerin Linguisticsand Lit-
erary History. Yet the insights that Auerbach
and Spitzer gleaned from evidence like unusual
turns of phrase or patterns of assonance can
often be gained at other levels of a text as well.
Kafka's haunting ironies play out in sentence
structuresthat do not always translatewell, yet
"the Kafkaesque"is fully visible in translation
at the levels of the paragraphand of the scene.
Translation can thus be used actively for
comparative study, but it should also be used
critically,drawingon the work of contemporary
translationtheoristswho study language as part
of a broadexaminationof culturaltranslation.A
notable example of such an approach is the
pathbreakingwork of LawrenceVenuti,closely
attentiveto relationsof power and influencebe-
tween "source"and "target"cultures.Relatedly,
Natalie Melas's forthcomingbook, All the Dif-
ference in the World,admirablyconnects com-
parative and postcolonial studies, through a
joint examination of issues of cultural transla-
tion in early comparatists like Charles Mills
Gayley and in the contemporary Caribbean
writerand theoristEdouardGlissant.
Specialized Generalism
The impulse to do comparativeworkremains,as
it has always been, a generalizing one: to look
beyond a single context or tradition.Oftenin the
past, though,generalistsoperatedat a high level
of culturalabstraction,takinglittle or no note of
local researchon works and on their culturesof
origin. Theoristslike NorthropFrye and Roland
Barthes typically made little reference to spe-
cialized scholarshipas they developedtheir ele-
gant theoriesin workslike Anatomyof Criticism
and Sade, Fourier,Loyola. At the end of Mime-
sis, Auerbach confesses his positive relief that
working in Istanbulduringthe war had cut him
off from "technical literatureand periodicals."
David Damrosch 329
He says, "If it had been possible for me to ac- er
quaint myself with all the work that has been f.
ei
done on so many subjects, I might never have
01
reached the point of writing" (557). Well, yes, o
but would he have had to read all the scholar-
Is
ship ever writtenon his chosen worksto use any
of it? His argumentscould have gained in depth
if he had consulted a good selection of the spe- o
re
cialized literature,either during the war, when
he was in Istanbul,with its extensive library,or
after the war, when he could have revised his Q.
manuscriptat any libraryof his choice.
A comparatisthas muchto gain from an ac-
tive engagement with specialized knowledge,
but this is not to say that a comparative work
should simply be the sum total of a set of spe-
cialized studies. On the contrary,a comparatist
needs to use the specialized literature selec-
tively, with a kind of scholarly tact. When our
purpose is not to delve into a culture in detail,
the reader and even the work may benefit by
being spared the full force of our local knowl-
edge. Such selectivity should yield something
otherthana reductionfrom the plenitudeof spe-
cialized studies. Intimately aware of a work's
life at home, the specialist is not always in the
best position to assess the dramaticallydifferent
termson which a text may work in a distantcul-
ture or a new theoreticalframework.Looking at
such new contexts, the generalist will find that
much of the specialist's information about the
work'sorigins is no longerrelevantand not only
can but should be set aside. At the same time,
any work that has not been wholly assimilated
to its new context will still carry with it many
elements thatcan best be understoodthroughan
explorationof why they came to be there in the
first place. The specialist's knowledge is the
major safeguardagainst the generalist's will to
power over texts thatotherwiseall too easily be-
come grist for the mill of a preformedhistorical
argumentor theoreticalsystem.
WhenI distinguishspecialistsfromgeneral-
ists, I mean to characterize approaches rather
than individuals. Anyone can be a specialist
 330 Comparative Literature?
IA
4)
in some areas and a generalist in others. When
.a
0
we use a generalistapproach,we should not cast
off our specialist selves-or our specialist col-
*a
0 leagues. Instead,the generalisthas the same ethi-
cal responsibilitytowardspecializedscholarship
E thata translatorhas towarda text's originallan-
r- guage: to presentthe work effectively in its new
culturalor theoreticalcontext while at the same
Iz time fundamentally getting it right with refer-
L.
ence to the sourceculture.Too often, a generalist
0
QI,
who alludes dismissively to the narrow-minded
4w concernsof specialistswill merelyend up retail-
ing a warmed-overversion of what specialists
were saying a generation earlier. Generalists
have much to learn from specialists and should
always try to build honestly, though selectively,
on the specialists' understandings,ideally even
inspiring the specialists to revise their under-
standingsin turn.
Comparative study today is becoming as
concerned with national as with international
contexts, as involved with translations as with
original texts, and as connected to specialized
scholarshipas to generalapproaches.Compara-
tive literatureis experiencing the excitement of
a newly global possibility, while at the same
time it can continue to exert a leavening influ-
ence on nationallybased and specialized study.
Comparativeliterature?Absolutely!
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