Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-ntvhh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-19T17:49:58.830Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Postcolonial Comparative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Robert J. C. Young
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Comparative literature is unlike any other discipline. elsewhere—for example, in politics or religion—the comparative operates as a subdiscipline within a larger general discipline. The problem for comparative literature is that there is no general discipline of literature: institutionally, the discipline consists of nothing but the fragments of different languages. As a result, through a curious metonymic inversion, comparative literature has come to figure as the totalizing general discipline of which it should form a part. This is why it also seems to offer a natural home for the idea of Weltliteratur. Comparative literature promises the Utopian recreation of the lost amphora of literature as it stood before its fall into the clutches of the nation.

Information

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 128 , Issue 3 , May 2013 , pp. 683 - 689
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. London: Verso, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Apter, Emily. “Comparative Exile: Competing Margins in the History of Comparative Literature.” Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. Ed. Bernheimer, Charles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 86–96. Print.Google Scholar
Apter, Emily. “‘Je Ne Crois Pas Beaucoup à la Littérature Comparée’: Universal Poetics and Postcolonial Comparatism.” Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Ed. Saussy, Haun. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. 54–62. Print.Google Scholar
Badiou, Alain. Petit manuel d'inaesthétique. Paris: Seuil, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Baneth-Nouailhetas, Émilienne, and Joubert, Claire. Comparer l'étranger. Enjeux du comparatisme en littérature. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Bopp, Franz. Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache. Frankfurt am Main: Andreäischen, 1816. Print.Google Scholar
Brunel, Pierre, Pichois, Claude, and Rousseau, André-Michel. Qu'est-ce que la littérature comparée? Paris: Colin, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. “Talking about Our Modernity in Two Languages.” The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1999. 263–85. Print.Google Scholar
Curtius, Ernst Robert. Europaische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Bern: Francke, 1948. Print.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. “Keats and Hölderlin.” Comparative Literature 8.1 (1956): 28–45. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Detienne, Marcel. Comparer l'incomparable. Paris: Seuil, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Seuil, 1952. Print.Google Scholar
Gajarawala, Toral Jatin. Untouchable Fictions: Literary Realism and the Crisis of Caste. New York: Fordham UP, 2013. Print.Google Scholar
Glissant, Édouard. Philosophie de la Relation: Poésie en étendue. Paris: Gallimard, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Rutherford, Jonathan. London: Lawrence, 1990. 222–37. Print.Google Scholar
Kilito, Abdelfattah. Thou Shalt Not Translate My Language. Trans. Hassan, Waïl S. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. Paris: Champion, 1925. Print.Google Scholar
Mufti, Aamir. “Orientalism and the Institution of World Literature.” Critical Inquiry 36.3 (2010): 458–93. Print.Google Scholar
Naipaul, V. S. A House for Mr Biswas. London: Deutsch, 1961. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Steiner, George. No Passion Spent: Essays, 1978-1995. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Wellek, René. “The Crisis of Comparative Literature.” The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature: From the European Enlightenment to the Global Present. Ed. Damrosch, David, Melas, Natalie, and Buthelezi, Mbongiseni. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. 161–72. Print.Google Scholar