Comparative Literature:A current perspective [Archives:2004/752/Education]

By Dr. Smita das Mohanty*
[email protected]
Ferdinand Brunetiere has said – “We do not know ourselves when we know only ourselves”. It emphasizes the importance of knowing others which leads to cultural integration. Cultural integration across nations is not an easy task because it is not confined only to reading books and acquiring knowledge. It emphasizes the liberalization of mind and intellectual taste. So, we need to study things from a variety of perspectives. In fact, comparative literature subsumes an integration of premises like tolerance, humanism, peaceful coexistence, positive attitude, and above all universalization and globalization.
On 11th December 2003, the Yemen Times editorial “Yemen's youth: a glimmer of hope” states what should be the duty of Yemeni students to put Yemen on the path of prosperity, progress, and a better future. The editor has quoted a few lines from the website www.ysaa.org (Yemen Students' Association Abroad) which highlights lack of education, widespread poverty among the people as potential causes leading to backwardness of Yemen and underscores the importance of a “sense of responsibility of Yemeni students to help Yemen get out of its stagnancies, to move on to achieve a better tomorrow”.
What is relevant to our discussion is that there is an abiding need for a proper utilization of knowledge and skill to know others' cultures and the diversions and differences between them. By doing so one can see the world as a multicultural unit and this is how the cultural integration can be achieved in this world.
A study of the world literature aims at expansion of knowledge, taste, aesthetic sense, and innovation of ideas. Cultural rigidity makes research activities narrow, unsuccessful and confines them within a boundary. While dealing with one's own patterns of life one should reflect on the qualities like tolerance, brotherhood, humanism to make his/her culture stronger. With such cultural values and behaviors one can cross the boundary and accommodate oneself in different social and cultural patterns of life. Analyzing cultural relativism in the book Issues in General and Comparative Literature (1987), Douwe W. Fokkema has connected it with the statement of human rights emphasizing the fact that the declaration of human right should “do more than just phrase respect for the individual as an individual”.
A Comparitist's job is to convince his students that, while studying books written in different languages and about different cultures, one has to see things with impartial eyes and a liberal temperament. According to Henry Remak “Comparative Literature is a study of literature beyond the confines of one's particular country, and the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand and other areas of knowledge and beliefs on the other”. If comparative literature is concerned with the studies beyond the boundaries of countries and is based on relationships, then it has definitely to be a multilingual study based on cultural integration.
It should be mentioned here that translation of great works from other languages is a precondition for comparative literature studies. Of course, translation studies have been developing as a discipline on its own right, comprising the fundamental aspects of comparative cultural history and cultural change. It can be regarded as the first step for the students to do research in comparative literature. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in this regard, argues not for a national equivalence between systems, but for multilingual and multicultural systems. This process can be successful on the availability of translations and it has become easy now-a-days by international marketing of books. Translation of Arabic books into English and other languages and vice-versa should occupy a major place in such an endeavor.
As an interdisciplinary field of study, comparative literature includes not only literature, but also arts, religion, sociology, anthropology, history, political science, etc. which deal with other ways of human expression. To find out the similarities in human experiences and expressions should be the major research area.
In order to promote comparative literature in Yemeni universities the first step is to make it an integral part in the course of study of English, Arabic, French languages and literature, etc. The future of comparative literature in Yemen is in the hands of those scholars who have research interest and capability to establish inter-cultural relationships along with a flair for better innovations in this globalized world.

Initial reading list:
– Bassnett, Sussan, 1993. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
– Clements, Robert J. 1978. Comparative Literature as Academic Discipline. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.
– Dev, Amiya 1984, The Idea of Comparative Literature, Calcutta: Papyrus
– Fokkema, Douwe W. 1987. Issues in General and Comparative Literature, Calcutta: Papyrus.
– Remak, Henry. 1961. Comparative Literature, Its Definition and Function in Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective. Ed by Newton Stalknecht and Horst Frenz. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press.
– Whorf, B.L. 1965. Language, Thought and Reality. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press

Journals:
Comparative Literature
Comparative Literature Studies
Jadavpur Journal of Comparative
Literature.

*The author has done post-doctoral research in comparative literature at the Dept. of Comparative Studies, Telugu University, Hyderabad, India.
c/o Dr. P. Mohanty
Professor, Dept. of English
Thamar University,
Thamar
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