Comparative Criticism Conference: Methods and Histories

Reports and Responses by Katarzyna Szymanska, Céline Sabiron, Peter Hill, April Pierce, Rosie

Lavan, and Natasha Ryan

Literature and the World

Chair: Matthew Reynolds (opening remarks)

Keynote speaker: Ritchie Robertson (Oxford) "Weltliteratur before Goethe"

Respondent: Wen-Chin Ouyang (London)

Sowon Park (Oxford) "The Pan-Asian Empire and World Literature"

Response by Katarzyna Szymanska:

In his inaugural paper, Ritchie Robertson took the conference participants on a long erudite

journey across the history of world literature before Goethe. Treating year 1827 and Goethe’s

famous statement as a symbolic milestone, he presented the transition from the notion of a

world literature confiend to the classical heritage towards the concept of ‘imaginary museum’

where all literature is available. The latter, however, could emerge only in the gradual process

of undermining and debunking the classics, which had hitherto set timeless standards as

indicated by Goethe’s formula: “Everyone should be a Greek in his own way”. Back then, non-

European literatures were rather marginalised, although they occasionally happened to be

approached by some European intellectuals. That took place mostly in two contexts: firstly,

alongside the rising fascination with primitive poetry and secondly, with the rediscovery of

traditions mediated by the Old Testament. Later on, translations from Sanskrit and other

languages opened Europe’s windows onto more literatures and cultures from outside.

In response to Ritchie Robertson’s talk, Wen-Chin Ouyang suggested approaching the problem

of “world literature” in comparative criticism within the framework of Postcolonial Studies.

According to her, the system of world literature is always embedded in the politics of

neutralising tensions between national ideas. As a consequence of that, different ideological

forces, as well as negotiations and compromises between them, are involved in the process of

canonising literatures on macro-scale and therefore should be taken into consideration in

Comparative Literature as a method.

That manifesto was followed by Sowan Park’s talk, in which she stated that the “comparative”

approach must not be an optional, voluntary and cosmopolitan act anymore, but should instead

be treated in terms of a burden of taking a stance towards the other. As she pointed out,

despite the increasing interest in intercultural exchange outside the Western canon,

Comparative Studies have so far mainly focused on the postcolonial areas of Western powers

and their surrogate nature defined from the Empire’s point of view. Sowan Park attempted to

reformulate this dynamics by establishing cultural relationships within the non-Western

colonial literary field of the Pan-Asian Empire (or Japanese Empire): among imperial Japan,

colonial Korea, semi-colonial Taiwan and China. This framework allowed her to analyse the

cultural processes in terms of voluntary and systemic acquisition, which was mostly pursued for

combative and competitive reasons. Also, the significance of creative adapting in the Pan-Asian

Empire led to an interesting conclusion about the way modern literature itself grew out of the

comparative perspective.

The follow-up discussion was wide-ranging. Matthew Reynolds referred to the idea of

“neutralising tensions”, expressing his doubts about the extent to which a single act of

understanding and appropriating always consists in naturalising the other’s perspective. This

was further taken up by Ritchie Robertson who then argued that Goethe’s interest in Indian

literature stemmed from his fascination with the culture and not the country as such. Also,

conscious of his marginal position as a writer in his own country, Goethe wanted to dissent

from the “pseudo-medieval” aesthetic qualities of German literature, and world literature

provided a way to escape from them. This point was supported by a participant from the

audience who mentioned Edward Said’s opinion about German Orientalism and his approval of

the German tradition, influenced by the fact that Germany had no colonial position in the

Orient. At the same time, however, Germany used British sources for their studies, which again

brought back the question of politics and colonial tensions. Wen-Chin Ouyang claimed that this

dimension is inevitable as the problem of world literature always involves a reflection about

how we place ourselves within the globality. Finally, the last voice in the discussion was a

response by a participant from the audience who recalled the earlier reception of Indian

literature (e.g. in Heraclites or Perrault). In light of that cultural exchange, he questioned the

relevance of Postcolonial perspective which seems too reductionist and imposes the strategy

of, as Brodsky would have it, “playing the victim in the scholarship”.

Interestingly enough, besides the heavily discussed Postcolonialism, no other methodological

framework for approaching the “imaginary museum” of world literature was suggested in the

discussion. What seems particularly problematic is not the scope of world literature but the

way in which its variety should be selected, presented and analysed (i.e. the “method”). For

instance, David Damrosch, later mentioned in Katrin Kohl’s paper, challenged the concept of a

“canon” and focused on the works in circulation, which sometimes even gain in translation to

different cultures. Then, Franco Moretti argued that comparative critics should analyse the

global sweep of forms and patterns, and therefore replace traditional close reading with

“distant reading”. More attempts to approach that problem have been made by applying, for

instance, the notion of “world-systems” by Immanuel Wallerstein or “translation zone” by Emily

Apter, to mention just a few. Moreover, the very problem of translation in comparative

literature and world literature (intensely analysed within the discipline of Translation Studies)

might also shed new light to the examples explained in the papers. The unquestioned

importance of literary translations which were only enlisted in the contexts of intercultural

exchange (e.g. The Pleasing History by Thomas Percy or Sankutala by William Jones, then

translated into German) could be further discussed. Not only did they mark the points of

contact but also they must have shaped the reception in the target culture as well as

transposed the original ideas in a particular manner. All those approaches may be counted

among promising ways to turn the “histories” of Comparative Criticism into the “methods”.

Comparative Philology

Chair: Nick Halmi (Oxford)

Michael Franklin (Swansea) "William Jones and India"

Angus Nicholls (Queen Mary) "Max Mueller and the Comparative Method"

R.A. Judy (Pittsburgh) "Barking Dogs and Thinking in Disorder, an Essay in a Philology of

Exteriority"

Response by Xiaofan Amy Li

Discussion of the issues that emerged from the three papers of this panel started with the

question of whether there was a tendency in nineteenth-century scholarship to universalise,

and whether sometimes attacking one universalism is in fact substituting it with another

universalism. Angus Nicholls responded to this question by pointing out that Max Müller

understood that there can be good and bad universalisms, and that a universalism that pays

attention to the connections between Hindu and Christian thought has something positive

about it, especially in the context of nineteenth-century colonial mentality that made

Europeans protest against any similarities between non-Christian and Christian traditions.

Nicholls also mentioned Edward Burnett Tylor, who took on Müller's universalism in an

anthropological way and argued that although different cultures evolve at different speeds, all

cultures are ultimately the same. R. A. Judy followed upon this and pointed out the need to

take a more nuanced approach to universalism. Certainly, political and teleological

universalisms should be abandoned, but in contrast, poetics seems to have a universal

applicability since it does not impose assumptions, is heterogeneous and can relate different

locals to each other. Interestingly, what was not mentioned was that universalism was not just

a nineteenth-century intellectual tendency but also continued into the twentieth century, albeit

in less Eurocentric forms, —such as Lévi-Strauss universalising all mythologies as one human

myth while preserving the differences of Amerindian cosmology and 'la pensée sauvage' to

Western and modern culture, —which once again shows that we should beware of any

universal rejection of universalism (or what Latour calls 'absolute relativism').

Also, reflecting on the panel's theme 'comparative philology', what was shown in the talks but

not explicitly remarked upon was the nineteenth-century faith in grammar as the new science

that can provide the means to discover the truth of language, philosophical thought, and their

evolution. This philological faith is another way of understanding why, as Michael Franklin

pointed out, William Jones saw strong phylogenetic connections between Sanskrit, Ancient

Greek and Latin that could lead to discovering a primordial common language. During the

questions and discussion, it was observed that Latin was believed to be a better medium for

translating Śakuntala, and some translations in modern European languages were in fact

derived from the Latin translation. This not only evidences the belief in the linguistic proximity

of the ancient Indo-European languages but also reveals the preference of nineteenth-century

Indologists and philologists such as Jones and Müller for paradigmatic and elite languages.

Parallel to the question of genre in comparative literature that was much discussed during the

conference, the question of language is also very telling. Jones's emphasis on re-centring

attention on Sanskrit literature does not escape cultural elitism, for Sanskrit was a 'purified' and

highly formalised language exclusive to the Hindu upper castes. Although introducing Sanskrit

to Europe does question Western literary canons, it does not break down cultural canons more

broadly speaking.

The discussion of this panel ended on the question of two kinds of comparative approaches

represented by Müller and Jones: the first being the comparatist who sees things from an

exterior position and categorises them; the second being one who recognises similarities and

differences but takes a much more descriptive and self-involved approach without much

abstract categorisation. Although Müller does seem to take a more abstract approach than

Jones, it is hard to see from where the philologist or comparatist could occupy a truly exterior

position. Instead of an exterior position, maybe the comparatist is situated in a position

characterised by the hybridity and super-abundance of cultures, as R. A. Judy remarked.

Shaped by the Classics?

Chair: Stephen Harrison (Oxford)

Tania Demetriou (York) "The Non-Existent Classical Epyllion: Comparative Counter-Criticism? "

Helen Slaney (Oxford) "Classical Reception and the Comparatist as Dilettante"

Henriette Korthals Altes (Oxford) "When Dance meets Text: Pascal Quignard's Medea"

John McKeane (Cardiff) "Sophocles, Hölderlin, Lacoue-Labarthe"

Response by Peter Hill:

This panel was held together – somewhat loosely – by a shared Classical theme. With the

exception of Helen Slaney’s, the papers did not deal with the history or methodology of

comparative criticism directly, but presented worked examples of comparison, one term of

which was, in each case, Classical in some way.

Tania Demetriou’s paper was a study of the influence of the epyllion, or short epic genre, on a

number of Elizabethan English poems (known as ‘Ovidian epyllia’). Or rather, it was in large part

a study of the academic arguments around this influence, whether it existed, whether there

was even such a thing as a Classical epyllion, what ‘genre’ these poems were seen as belonging

to, and so forth. One classicist had argued that the epyllion, as a Classical genre, never existed;

but it continued to be used by scholars of the Early Modern period to explain the influence of

certain short Classical works on the Elizabethan ‘short epic’ poems in question. More recent

classicists had redefined the Classical epyllion, but it did not map especially well onto the

Elizabethan poems later claimed as epyllia.

I could not help thinking, listening to this account, that it was the idea of a ‘genre’ itself that

was being undermined here. The concept certainly seemed to exercise a stronger pull over the

academic literary scholars, determined to prove the existence or non-existence of the epyllion

genre, the influence of this genre on that genre, what the existence of a Classical genre might

have to say about the existence of an Elizabethan genre, and so on. For the writers of the

Elizabethan poems themselves the whole question of whether or not they were working in the

‘epyllion genre’ or any other ‘genre’ in this narrow sense, seems, as I followed the argument, to

have been rather irrelevant. Certainly they appear to have had a working notion of the epic as a

broader literary form: they regarded the poems in question, as Demetriou put it, as a short epic.

But short epics (like prose epics) were forbidden by Aristotle, who said that epics must be long

poems. One wonders, in fact, whether the whole search for a Classical genre to assign these

Elizabethan poems to may not have come from deference to this statement of Aristotle’s, on

the part of the academic tradition – whereas the Elizabethan poets showed themselves rather

more flexible.

Henriette Korthals Altes’s paper considered a hybrid work, the Medea of Pascal Quignard, a

performance which alternates readings from the written text of Medea with sections of

Japanese butoh dance performed by Carlotta Ikeda (as well as Quignard’s theoretical work

L’Origine de la danse, a reflection on this performance). The theme that links his work with that

of the dancer is, as Korthals Altes showed, a shared generation, that of post-1945, with

common experiences of growing up after the destruction of cities, Hiroshima and Le Havre. The

Classical connection was, in this case, a little stretched: Quignard took the Medea legend as a

starting-point, but the points Korthals Altes emphasized were rather the similarities of

experience between France and Japan, the idea of performance as a healing therapy, and –

most suggestively, perhaps – that of dance as complementary to speech, as capable of

expressing things which language cannot.

This does raise one question with respect to the Classical heritage, though it is rather peripheral

to the themes of Korthals Altes’s talk. This is: in what sense is the Classical Medea myth the

heritage of France, rather than of Japan? The Medea story is presented as something that

Quignard brought to the partnership, just as much as his experience of growing up in Le Havre;

and as Ikeda brought the butoh dance form, evolved in Japan after the War. The processes of

cultural ‘inheritance’ or appropriation whereby the Classical Medea myth can be seen as

belonging unquestionably to the French rather than the Japanese side of experience could be

an interesting subject of investigation.

John McKeane’s paper deals with the Classics, once again, at one remove: he considers the

French deconstructionist Lacoue-Labarthe’s engagement with Hölderlin’s translations of

Sophocles. The ancient/modern dichotomy is deployed, not as between the chronologically

‘ancient’ Sophocles and either Lacoue-Labarthe or Hölderlin, but within the oeuvre of

Sophocles between Antigone, ‘ancient’ in character, and the ‘modern’ Oedipus. (Antigone is

described as obedient to traditional values and ties, whereas Oedipus rises to greatness of his

own accord and through the use of reason - though this leads to his later demise.)

I agree with McKeane’s argument that Lacoue-Labarthe’s readings, bridging the divide between

literary and philosophical studies, open up lines for further exploration. In particular, we might

ask whether the ‘ancient/modern’ contrast in Lacoue-Labarthe’s sense can be applied to other

(chronologically ‘modern’) drama as well as the chronologically ancient Sophocles. Where

would one place, for instance, Ibsen, with his heroines and heroes so often dragged back by

‘ancient’, primordial ties, straining against them with the impulse of a (‘modern’?) vocation, yet

typically caught, defeated, unable to move? An exploration beyond the purely literary of the

philosophical and political implications of this kind of tension seems an interesting possibility.

Helen Slaney’s talk provoked the most discussion, as it engaged directly with the central

methodological preoccupation of the conference, suggesting certain features of the eighteenth-

century dilettanti as possible models for comparative studies. These eighteenth-century

gentlemen operated in a context before the institutionalisation of boundaries between

academic disciplines and fields, and were therefore able to range across a variety of topics,

from appreciation (the dilettante as collector or consumer of art and knowledge) to practical

activity (the dilettante as dabbler in architecture or literature: as Slaney pointed out, their

involvement in the processes of creation exempts them from being regarded as mere passive

consumers of art.) Yet with the rise of professional antiquarians, architects, writers, and so

forth, both intensely knowledgeable about and exclusively devoted to one branch of activity,

they came to be seen as outmoded and amateurish. Exactly what we should take from this

account of the dilettanti was left, largely, to the audience’s discretion – but certainly the

implication was that some elements of their practice, at least, might be valuable for

comparative literary – and other – studies.

The model proposed by Slaney seems a similar one to Edward Said’s ‘amateurism’, similarly

designed to oppose professionalization and specialization in academia. Yet the history of the

dilettanti itself raises problems with this. For as Slaney suggests, they succumbed not merely to

the narrow-mindedness of the newly specialized world, but to an expertise and indeed a

commitment to study which was arguably superior. This suggests, to my mind, an important

weakness of either the amateur or the dilettante as a model. This does not lie in his lack of

specialization or professional boundaries: that may indeed be a virtue. It lies rather in his lack of

commitment to any, or all, of the various fields or activities he may take up. The amateur or

dilettante does not simply attempt to deal with all the fields of the various professionalisms: he

also stands, in the final analysis, outside of them: he is free to drop the lot and return to his

other, original role, that of the leisured gentleman (the ‘mere consumer’ of art and learning). It

is, indeed, this freedom that gives him the right to cross those disciplinary boundaries. If the

professional is over-committed to his narrow specialism, the dilettante is not, in the end,

committed to anything – not even art or knowledge in general terms. Perhaps this is merely a

personal prejudice, but the more I think about it the more I find myself favouring a different

figure, that of the autodidact (also an image used by Said, as R A Judy had just reminded us).

The autodidact, unlike the amateur or dilettante, does not stand above the various professional

specialisms, but outside them – has in many cases been excluded from them. He has a strong

commitment, not to a particular discipline or category, but to knowledge and skill in general. He

has his limitations, but in intention, in purpose, I find him a more useful figure to emulate than

the dilettante or the amateur.

Comparative Literature, Britain and Empire

Chair: Mohamed-Salah Omri (Oxford)

Keynote speaker: Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam) "Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Philologists: or,

Comparative Literature between National Ethnicity and Global Empire"

Respondent: Ritchie Robertson (Oxford)

Response by April Pierce:

The Keynote speaker, Joep Leersseen from Amsterdam started out by saying his talk would be a

bit “all over the place”, but that it focused on the development of the dialectic surrounding

history of comparative literature, as it pertains to:

1) Institutional

2) Intellectual

and

3) Ideological modes.

He asked: Do we need an internal consistency within the development of the history itself for

us to be able to define it? How do we do literary history that does not fit the Gutenberg

pattern? What does Comparative Literature compare? Prof. Leerseen noted that there is often

an assumption that Critical Literature is a taxonomy. There are other unfounded assumptions

surrounding national literature: does national mean “language culture”? Is this how we identify

a nation -- do languages and nation hang together?

Prof. Leersseen went on to describe logocentricism within the field, and explained that

Comparative Literature as we know it emerged in the 1800s. The rise of philology rides, he said,

on the textual editing of national literatures -- this process was highly politicised within Europe

(and in French and German academia in particular). He went on to say that ownership of fables

is also problemetised and debated, and is subject to geopolitics (an example: the national

origins of Beowolf was hotly contested, with various group warring for national “rites” to the

creation of the text).

In 1953 the first British established lectureship for Comparative Literature was created. Britain

was in many was idiosyncratic -- its Comparative Literature approaches were established late

within the academic institutional context (1953 and 1975 were significant years for its

development). Matthew Arnold “ethnicised” literature -- various types of literary imagination

were attributed to various cultures. Trends started to come together in the idea that nationality

is only an issue for the “Celtic fringe”.

Prof. Leersseen then went on to discuss the implications of the development of Comparative

Literature for post 2000 studies. He said he favoured a triangle formation, wherein World

Literature, Comparative Literature, and Post-Colonial Literature were in a kind of triangulated

harmony. He suggested that the British Case since 1975 was that “we’re all constructivists now”

-- the nation has become a “national matrix” and is now in question. Underlying meanings of

textual history or the singular referents of meaning are now in question. Most people believe

that identity is constructed in an afterlife, etc. Literature is performed, received, etc -- it is in

process. He argued that transnationality reigns supreme.

There were a number of responses. Amongh other things, Ritchie Robertson defended the

legacy of Matthew Arnold. There was a comment that the nation is no longer the matrix,

because we draw strongly on translations within the discipline of Comparative Literatary

Studies.

Reports from the Field

Chair: Elinor Shaffer (London)

Angus Nicholls (Queen Mary) "On Chairing the Comparative Literature Department at Queen

Mary College London"

Emily Finer (St Andrews) "The New Comparative Literature at St Andrew's"

Rebecca Jones and Marlies Gabriele Prinzl (London) "Comparative Literature in the United

Kingdom since the Millennium"

The Oxford Graduate Discussion Group

Response by Celine Sabiron:

The session entitled "Reports from the Field" was very interesting and echoed the papers heard

during the day. It gave an up-to-date view of the actual practice of comparative criticism across

the country. It pragmatically showed which UK universities offered a comparative literature

course and how rich the programme was in these universities. What came out from this

dialogue between key representatives from different universities was that the offer was very

varied. Yet, it seemed that there was an increasing demand from the students who wanted to

break with the usual national frame attached to literary studies.

The panel was chaired by Elinor Shaffer, a founding member of the Executive Committee of the

British Comparative Literature Association and the editor of the Comparative Literature Series

of Legenda, and of the series Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe, published by

Continuum Books. She first introduced two graduate students from Birmingham University and

UCL, Rebecca Jones and Marlies Gabriele Prinzl, respectively. These two students, along with

Kasia Szymanska from Oxford, are postgraduates' representatives of the BCLA.

Rebecca Jones and Marlies Gabriele Prinzl then presented the results of their research on the

state of comparative literature in the United Kingdom since the Millenium. As courses

constantly change, they admitted that they found it difficult to give any accurate account of the

situation, the latter being so unstable. Even if their data is necessarily incomplete due to the

changing landscape of the field and the enormity of the task, they said that there were 2.5

million students in the UK in 2011-2012, but only a small percentage study comparative

literature, whether they take a full comparative literature course or a more general degree

course with a comparative literature component. Most universities (out of 109 in the UK) do

offer some form of comparative literature, whether it is a full course or a few modules even

though "comparative literature" often does not appear in the name of the course. What stands

out though is that England and Scotland are the UK countries which offer the largest number of

comparative literature courses. Wales and Northern Ireland do not offer any comparative

literature courses: there are options that can be taken in Nothern Ireland and other ways of

studying the subject in Wales. London is of course the biggest center for comparative literature,

followed by four universities in Scotland, i.e. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and St Andrews. It

is worth pointing at these geographical inequalities, since it shows where the efforts need to be

directed.

Despite these disparities, Rebecca Jones and Marlies Gabriele Prinzl noted a resurgence in pure

comparative studies at graduate level and they mentioned a few institutions (Queen Mary,

Nottingham, Bristol to name but a few) which have successfully started to offer MA courses in

comparative literature. Throughout the country there are 22 comparative elements at

undergraduate level and 49 at graduate and postgraduate levels.

They pointed at a certain number of trends:

1) Specialisation and broadening of degrees through two case studies (St Andrews and Dundee)

There are more and more interdisciplinary degrees. If at St Andrews they started offering an

MLitt in Comp Lit in 2012 (a year ago) on top of the MA in literature. At Dundee they are

offering more original interdisciplinary subjects like the MLitt in Comics Studies which has been

taught since 2011. Dundee also specialises in languages, so their comparative literature courses

are combined with language courses. On top of the main languages, they also offer more

uncommon African and Asian ones.

This detail was very thought-provoking I thought as it raised the question (asked by Katrin Kohl)

of whether these comparative literature courses should come with language courses. Do

students need to be able to study the text in its original language when on a comparative

literature course or can he simply rely on the translation? Yet, if studying comparative literature

implies learning languages, does it imply that the course should be called “comparative

literature and translation”? More and more comparative literature departments work in

conjunction with modern languages departments. Should it become the norm? Translation

studies are also gaining ground (eg: The Open University or Birmingham University). What has

been noted as well is that both the Open University or the Department for Continuing

Education do now offer more online courses on comparative literature and translation studies.

Rebecca Jones and Marlies Gabriele Prinzl did not mention this, but there is a C19th European

Literature online course offered by the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education

for instance.

2) Interdisciplinarity and Flexibility

Other subjects are studied, like film or visual culture, which raises the question of how many

outdated the term “comparative literature” is, since other media, outside the usual textual

ones, are now used. Hence the choice of the Oxford Programme to be called “Comparative

Criticism” to encompass a broader range of material and supports.

3) Blending of trends

There is a broadening of literary studies beyond Europe and anglophones studies.

4) Comparative Literature at Non Degree level

Summer Schools offer more and more courses on comparative literature. The Translation

Research Summer School (based on a cooperation between Manchester, UCL, Edinburgh and

Hong Kong), and the British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School based at the

University of East Anglia do offer comparative literature on their programmes.

So does the schools adopting the international baccalaureate (188 schools offering it out of

394). Pupils read between 10 and 12 books a year and about 2 or 3 are read in translation. In

Britain 4000 pupils took this course in 2012.

After this very instructive summary of the state of comparative literature in Britain, Dr Emily

Finer, a lecturer in comparative literature and literary reception at the University of St Andrews,

talked about her own experience of setting up a course on comparative literature at her

university. Elinor Shaffer introduces Emily as the architect of the Comparative Literature at St

Andrews, simply because the course did not exist before she arrives. It was thus immensely

interesting to see how she implemented the project. At St Andrews, it is the School of Modern

Languages that runs the Comparative Literature component. There are still few unions in the

UK between the two and Emily wished there were more.

Emily presented us with the timeline of the creation of this new course. Collaboration was

explored in 2010-11: researchers were invited to try and get a sense of the field in the UK. This

was funded by the Institute for Contemporary and Comparative Literature (ICCL) based at St

Andrews. The first undergraduate module was set up in 2010, with lectures given by specialists

of the field. At St Andrews, it is compulsory for students to study languages along side their

comparative literature major component. They currently have between 50 and 100 students in

the first year (variations depending on years) and about 50 in the second year.

Emily thinks that students always contemplate literature beyond its national boundaries, and in

fact it is the system that forces them to categorise; hence her wish to make this change. In

2013-2014, the comparative literature course now offers 3 different subjects.

After sharing this very telling timeline with the audience, Emily raised both her fears and

solutions for the programme:

-students will no longer bother with languages.

-the risk of dumbing down

-teaching monolingual students

-research-led teaching

-noone knows what comparative literature is

She articluated these concerns and responded to each of them, in turn. This felt very reassuring

as most people setting up similar courses must experience the same worries.

Her talk was followed by Dr. Angus Nicholls’s presentation, which compared and contrasted

Emily’s situation with his own. Angus Nicholls is a Senior Lecturer in German and Comparative

Literature at Queen Mary University. Like Emily Finer, he also gave the timeline of the

development of the Comparative Literature programme at his university. A few courses in

comparative literature were created in 2006. Then a department of comparative literature and

culture got set up in 2008, with a chair in 2009. The department has kept growing since its

creation in 2008, going from 52 to 80 students recently. Like Emily Finer, Angus reports the

issues he has had to face:

-the relationship between this department and the school of modern languages, which it

belongs to

-the crossing of national boundaries: Queen Mary being situation at the East end of London, it

has a very diverse ethnic background.

-the perceived global hegemony of English as the language of world literature.

The session ended with the representatives of the Oxford postgraduates’ discussion group

describing their fortnightly meetings over the past two terms. The group was set up by

graduate students (Rosie Lavan, April Pierce, Kasia Szymanska, Hannah Arnold, and Peter Hill)

working on literature and theory across national, linguistic, historical, and disciplinary

boundaries. The meetings started in Hilary Term and they took place at the Humanities Division

in both terms last year, while this year they will be held at St Anne's college. The texts read

ahead of the meeting and discussed during the session are very varied and chosen by both the

committee and the audience. There are about 8 to 15 participants each time and they come

from all sorts of subjects within the Humanities and Social Divisions. Open to all –

undergraduates, graduates, early career and postholders – this group wishes to be as inclusive

as possible.

The texts read in Hilary Term were purposely quite theoretical so that everyone could get a

grounding in comparative criticism (with readings of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “On the

Different Methods of Translating” (1813), translated by Susan Bernofsky, or later on of texts

dealing with the Babel theme: Jacques Derrida’s ‘Les Tours de Babel’, and George Steiner’s

After Babel – part 3 of ‘Understanding as Translation’. These texts were looked at with the first

part of Matthew Reynolds’s The Poetry of Translation (part I, ‘Translation and Metaphor’) in

mind).

The readings in Trinity Term were more hands-on and they were closely tied to other events

organised by the Network. For example ahead of the seminar on "Translation and Comparison"

(13th March 2013) with two invited speakers, Prof. Clive Scott (UEA) and Prof. Clive Holes

(Oxford), the discussion group worked on the introduction and chapter one of Clive Scott’s

Literary Translation and the Rediscovery of Reading (2012). Then, Scottish poet Don Paterson

was invited to St Anne's college as the Weidenfeld visiting professor in European Comparative

Literature. The discussion group thus focused on the notion of "version", which Don Paterson

talked about during a seminar : what is the difference between a version and a translation?

The meetings were also much more hands-on in Trinity Term. Various English translations of

Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe” from the Metamorphosis were read in addition to the original. In

preparation for this discussion group, they also read Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation, William

Shakespeare’s use of the story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), A.D. Melville’s 1986

translation, and Ted Hughes‘ 1997 translation. In the last session, texts such as Terence Cave's

“Locating the Early Modern”, Paragraph (29: 1, March 2006) Isabel Hofmeyer's “Bunyan in

Africa: Text and Transition”, Interventions (3:3, 2001), and James F. Knapp's “Primitivism and

Empire: John Synge and Paul Gauguin”, Comparative Literature (41:1, Winter 1989) were read

and studied.

Comparative Criticism and Inter-Art Studies

Chair: Elinor Shaffer (London)

Keynote speaker: Mihaly Szegedy-Maszak (Indiana/ Budapest) "Unseen Paintings and Unheard

Melodies: The Uses and Limits of Interart Studies"

Respondent: Patrick McGuinness (Oxford)

Response by Rosie Lavan:

This plenary session broadened the comparative terms of the conference by turning to interart

studies. Mihaly Szegedy-Maszak began his fascinating paper on literature and music, which

focused on Joyce, Wagner, and Liszt, by acknowledging the problems for the scholar who offers

a synthesised reading across art forms but is not necessarily “qualified” to comment on those

forms beyond their primary discipline. He honed in on the relationship between literature and

music with reference initially to polyphony in Dostoevsky, simultaneity in E. M. Forster’s

Howard’s End, and Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point. A central question was that of

integration: how can literature integrate the other arts, he asked, and how can the other arts

use literature?

Another pressing question at the heart of the paper was about the languages of criticism: what

does it mean for terms or concepts to be carried across from—in these examples—music to

literature? What happens when those terms lose that force of specificity which adheres to

them in musical contexts—is it enough for literature simply to borrow them and their inherent

ideas? To illustrate this movement of translation (in both its etymological and figurative senses)

Thomas Mann’s use of the leitmotif was cited: the novel, Mann claimed, was a texture of

themes in which ideas become leitmotifs. The questions can, of course, be reversed: what is the

role of text in music? A poem arguably loses its textual identity as soon as it is set to music: we

expect and ask different things of sung words.

Professor Szegedy-Maszak highlighted Wagnerian connections in Joyce, with a sustained

emphasis on Finnegans Wake supported by reference to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young

Man, Ulysses, and Exiles, Joyce’s only play. Even for the initiated Finnegans Wake presents

perennial challenges and thus the musical associations Professor Szegedy-Maszak traced

brilliantly enlivened one strand of this famously perplexing text. The biographical details he

wove into the discussion—that Joyce was a gifted singer, well-versed in Wagner’s works—

illuminated the depth of the connection between literature and music and in so doing asserted

the very necessity of his own comparative critical approach. Perhaps it would also have been

interesting to bring another incarnation of Finnegans Wake to this discussion—the recordings

of Joyce reading extracts from the novel when it was still the ‘Work in Progress’ (e.g. ‘Anna Livia

Plurabelle’, 1929). The self-conscious musicality (if one can, after such an erudite paper, use the

term so casually) of Joyce’s reading seems to raise further interesting questions about the

relationship between this texts aural/oral and written (and perhaps even visual?) identities.

In his response, Patrick McGuinness considered the relationship of the French Symbolists to

Wagner—the use to which music is put in Baudelaire and Mallarmé, for example, serves to

emphasise the primacy of poetry above all other art forms. Interart became interdisciplinary as

Schopenhauer was also introduced to the discussion; also raised were the cognitive processes

of visual versus aural perception. Above all this paper prompted important reflections on—and

stimulating questions about—critical methodologies in comparative analyses.

Appropriations and Resistances

Chair: R.A. Judy (Pittsburgh)

Betiel Wasihun (Oxford) "Die Nibelungen: From Epic Poem to Modern Film Fritz Lang's

Translated Betrayals"

Maha Adel Megeed (London) "Conceptualizing Khayal in late 19th Century Writing"

Amar Guendouzi and Hamid Ameziane (Tizi-Ouzou, Algeria) "Comparative Criticism, the African

Novel, and African Popular Literature"

Response by Rosie Lavan:

Although these three fascinating papers ranged widely in content, visibility was a preoccupation

common to them all, and it was picked up in the discussion which followed, emerging as an

engagingly multifaceted concept to consider in these reflections on appropriations and

resistances in three very different comparative encounters.

In Betiel Wasihun’s paper visibility could initially be taken quite literally: seeing and not seeing

were central to her analysis of Fritz Lang’s 1924 film adaptation of the medieval German epic

Die Nibelungen. The process of adaptation—a translation in the etymological sense of handing

over—involved a key shift in visual perception. A major challenge for Lang was to make

invisibility visible, at those points at which Siegfried, the epic’s protagonist, enters his net of

invisibility. Of course stills from the film reveal the limits of special effects in the 1930s to the

gentle amusement of the contemporary film-watcher, but that other act of translation in which

Lang was engaged—trying to convey visually what could otherwise only be seen in the mind’s

eye of the reader of Die Nibelungen—raised further, cross-media issues of comparison. Central

to Wasihun’s interest as well were the ways in which Lang conveys secrets and moments of

betrayal: again, the eyes have it, as she followed eyelines in stills from the film at key plot

points which resonated with the political situation in Germany at the time of the film’s release.

Maha Adel Megeed’s paper took us to nineteenth-century Arabic literature and concentrated

our attention on the widely debated Arabic term khayal. The term is usually but not entirely

adequately translated as “imagination”—it does not fully correspond with contemporary

understandings of the imaginary. Adel Megeed took the term in more capacious and

deliberately more complicated sense, proposing khayal as a possible definition of comparative

criticism. Khayal is a faculty between the intellect and the senses and it therefore allows you to

see the links which exist between the abstract and the bodily; not only does it enable us to see

things in a full sense, making them visible or discernible or able to be apprehended, but it also

always implies space. From its own in-between space it offers a way of visualising the world.

Amar Guendouzi’s authoritative paper, co-authored with Hamid Ameziane, sought to confront

and challenge Western understandings of African Anglophone literature by undermining the

established historicist, political and theoretical frameworks through which it has traditionally

been approached in the West over the past 40 years. Critical studies, among which Charles

Larson’s The Emergence of African Fiction (1972) has been pre-eminent, have presented

deleteriously partial accounts. Guendozi cited the memorable response of the Ghanaian

novelist Ayi Kwei Armah to Larson’s heavily biographical reading of his works; Armah was

moved to coin the term “Larsony” as he attacked the critic’s art of using fiction as criticism of

fiction, co-opting established narratives about Africa which obliterated the literature itself.

Popular, public, radical and utterly heteroglossic literary cultures have formed and produced

writing in Africa, but they have remained invisible in dominant critical accounts. Bakhtin,

Guendozi suggested in his conclusion, offers the most positive theoretical possibilities for a new

and more tolerant space in which to consider, appreciate and achieve an informed and nuanced

understanding of African literature: Bakhtinian heteroglossia offers a promising alternative to

the narrow either-or of comparativism.

Particular Histories

Chair: Ben Morgan (Oxford)

Johannes Kaminski (Cambridge) "Punctuation and Revolution: Guo Moruo's Translation of

Werther (1922)".

Jeremy Adler (London) "Goethe and Henry James"

Yen-Maï Tran-Gervat (Paris 3) "Comparing histories of translation(s) (England, France, Spain)"

Response by April Pierce:

Yen-Maï Tran-Gervat started off the session by comparing histories of translations of The

Oxford History of Literary Translation, which is a series that is published in French, Spanish, and

English. She compared their materiality (size) and their organisation/framework/rules. Dr. Tran-

Gervat noted that there were various editorial differences between the different editions,

despite their apparent coherence. She discussed their thematic genres. Dr. Tran-Gervat then

discussed the common ground of all the versions, explaining the use of the term “history” as

something that was similar in all three versions. She tried to reconstruct the material and

intellectual histories in spite of contemporary opinion. There are differences, Dr. Tran-Gervat

said, in organisation between the histories. She discussed editorial decisions surrounding the

organisation of the different histories, before ending with the case study of E.T.A. Hoffman’s

“Tales in XIX C. Translations”. Differences between the version were compared.

Johannes Kaminski followed this discussion with a description of Guo Morou’s Translation of

Werther. He explained that Goethe’s texts were translated under certain political conditions

favourable to the translation of the text, and described the cultural compatability that made

this translation possible. He explained that the 1920s nurtured the translation of Goethe in

China -- Die Lieden des jungen Werthers was originally published in 1774 (verson A) and then

again in 1786 (version B). He discussed the literary style of the host versus the guest language

and the nativism of names in the translation of Goethe. He described how Guo Moruo

translated “Werther” in 1922, with very large alterations to the texts. Overall, the translation

was very faithful in terms of structure, but much less faithful in terms of vocabulary and cultural

context. Dr. Kaminski then discussed the issue of genre and literary style in such a translation

situation. He explained that Guo Moruo’s forward politicised Goethe’s text, but that the politics

expressed were compatable in the context of 1920s Cina -- thus, there was an underlying

linguistic and social compatability that made the translation possible, and the drive for the new

vernacular primed the soil for translation.

Jeremy Adler then spoke on the connections between Goethe and Henry James. He said that

James’ work was predicated on Goethe’s Dr. Adler argued that James’ reception of Goethe was

not often treated by criticism. James incorporated the philosophy and psychology of Goethe’s

writing. Dr. Adler traced Goethe’s major influence on English literary work (illustrated, for

instance, by Matthew Arnold). He said that James was aware of the context in which Goethe

wrote. Goethe also influenced transcendentalism. Emerson called Goethe “the soul of the 19th

century”. James echoed this sentiment, viewing Goethe as the pinicle of western civilisation. Dr.

Adler noted that James read precociously -- he read many esoteric philosophies in his younger

years. Of these readings, James found Goethe particularly compelling. James was very inspired

by German philosophies. The inspiration, argued Dr. Adler, was a primary one, resulting in a

“dawn” of James’ creative abilities. James’ interest in Goethe was also lifelong, and can be

traced through his work. Dr. Adler argued that the influence altered his literary thinking and

projects. Discussion followed.

Tropes of Comparison

Chair : Shane Weller (Kent)

Katrin Kohl (Oxford) "Metaphors of Comparison"

Amy Li (Oxford) "Temporality in the Construction of Interpretive Contexts in Comparative

Studies"

Carole Bourne-Taylor (Oxford) "Michel Deguy's Ethical Practice of Comparison"

Response by Natasha Ryan:

Katrin Kohl began by asking how we conceptualise Comparative Literature. ‘Comparative

Literature’ as a term is not useful as it conflates the critical act with the object of study and the

term ‘Comparative Criticism’ is a preferable alternative as it is clearer and avoids metaphor.

Katrin then went on to discuss the conceptual metaphors that dominate the field. For example,

she noted that, while Literary History is temporally focussed and provides the critic with clear

points of reference, Comparative Literature tends to favour spatial metaphors, which are often

more obscure. This is evident in the case of the term ‘World Literature’, which Goethe initially

placed in opposition to National Literature. World Literature has come to be seen as a

progression from National Literature because it encompasses a larger space and is therefore a

development of sorts. Thus, Goethe establishes a hierarchy between literatures. However, now

that World Literature is no longer seen as a binary opposite to National Literature, the

metaphor fails. Similarly, S. Bassnett conceives of Comparative Literature as spatial, envisioning

readers as part of a collective ‘we’, travelling individually towards a shared space.

Next, Katrin explained that Damrosch abandons the metaphor of World Literature and makes

the distinction between ‘World’ and ‘Global’ Literature. Katrin suggested that the term ‘World

Literature’ is only useful when used clearly but cannot be used to apply norms or values

because it’s generally too obscure, having become an umbrella heading for various conceptual

approaches to the field. The more metaphorically rich our vocabulary is when discussing

Comparative Literature, the less useful. Metaphors, if used, should be tight and exact as they

become dangerous when unconstrained. Katrin finished by introducing Casanova’s metaphor,

which envisages a ‘world republic of letters’. This is a stronger metaphor than the alternatives

as it is more focussed and precise, and suggests the political power games that often

accompany the study of Comparative Literature.

Amy Li asked how far a concern with temporality should affect Comparative Literature. She

presented three temporal frameworks we use in our approach to Comparative Literature:

literature that is contemporaneous; that which falls within a similar historical period; and that

which is dissynchronous. The first two of these are dominant in the field, particularly in cross-

cultural comparisons but Amy argued that dissynchronous works can also be compared cross-

culturally. She questioned the idea of contemporaneity, suggesting that if two (or more)

different cultures exist simultaneously but are ignorant of each other they cannot really be

viewed as contemporaneous. Simultaneous cultures can be seen as dissynchronous becuase, if

there is no relation between the cultures they cannot recognise any mutual significance. Amy Li

pointed out that different cultures have different concepts of time, so time itself has its own

history. However, from our point of view, we can make the connection between cultures and,

therefore, we might also make connections between cultures that are dissynchronous.

Amy Li then went on to question whether a temporal framework is at all justified in

Comparative Literature, given the spatial bias within the field (as noted by Katrin Kohl). Amy Li

conjectured that, in the realm of thought, anything can coexist and we should therefore take a

less linear approach to Comparative Literature. In fact, we must stop thinking of time in

geometric terms and adopt a more conceptual attitude; Comparative Literature can surpass

temporal and spatial boundaries and we can thus extend the field.

Carole Bourne-Taylor gave a paper on "Michel Deguy's Ethical Practice of Comparison". She

chose a very interesting character since Michel Deguy is a leading contemporary poet and

philosopher. Close to Jacques Derrida, he is the founder of the Collège International de

Philosophie, the editor of Les Temps Modernes. He is an iconoclast who plays with biblical

images reduced to mere simulations or clowning, and uses paronomasia and tautology. Le “tout

culturel” is Michel Deguy’s bête noire as he fights against some deadly uniformity, which is both

toxic and vampiric, talking about the narcissism of Disneyland. He regrets the mimetic

contagion to the rest of the world and talks about a levelling down of humanities. Like

Mallarmé before him, he offers an antidote to similarity, mainstream popular culture. He makes

space for the Baudelairienne unknown as he chooses hospitality. He wishes to welcome and

accept others in their otherness/ strangeness. Because of this presence and absence in his

poetry, he talks about poetics.

Talking about comparisons, Dr Bourne-Taylor explained that Deguy describes his life as “the

mystère du comme”. It is the difference that opens up the possibility of comparison, seen as an

intellectual and ethical operation. Comparison offers the promise of endless possibilities. It

makes the reconfiguration of the world possible. It instills possibility into the world. Being is

produced in the gap left by “comme”. Poetry opens up existence without ever giving any

answer seen as a form of closure. She referred to Ricoeur’s interpretation of metaphors.

Deguy’s role is diabolical in an etymological sense. Reading is the practice of comparison; it

allows encounters with alterity, it reenchants by disenchanting. Dr Bourne-Taylor quoted a few

puns used by Deguy in his poetry: “commune” written as comme-une (like one), “commun des

mortels” becoming “comme-un des mortels” in his poetry. Deguys wishes to preserve and

respect the difference. “Com-penser” is used to mean “to compensate”, but also “to think

with”.

Dr Bourne-Taylor ended her talk on the crucial relations between poetry and ethics in Deguy’s

work.

The three papers were followed by questions

Round Table Discussion

With Terence Cave, Laura Marcus, Mohamed-Salah Omri, Matthew Reynolds (Oxford)

Response by Natasha Ryan:

Matthew Reynolds began the discussion by drawing together some of the topics broached over

the course of the conference. He observed that Comparative Literature is often a question of

positionality; that is, the place from which we look at something changes the thing we are

looking at. Dr Reynolds also spoke about intertextuality across different literary forms and

media, and how translation might represent or contribute to the intertextual element. He also

noted that in Comparative Literature we cannot assume a shared knowledge or shared reading

practices. Consequently, in this field critics face a particularly acute challenge of, not only

discussing texts, but also representing the texts they are discussing to an audience that is likely

to be unfamiliar with them. This was a challenge for institutions as well as for individuals.

Professor Marcus drew on Dr Reynolds’s comment about different media and went on to say

that an intermedial point of view can help dissolve borders. She said that an interdisciplinary

focus is part of the basis on which the ‘new universities’ were formed. Prof Marcus then

wondered where we draw the boundaries between different literary forms or between

literature and other media. Perhaps there are multiple ways of drawing these boundaries. She

expressed hope for a Comparative Literature that might successfully marry the faculties of

English and Modern Languages.

Mohamed-Salah Omri was interested in the patterns of literary exchange that had emerged

during the conference. He suggested a number of key phrases that might sum up the

conference: war booty (imperial projects, the exchanges allowed by conflict/resolution, the

language(s) of war); imperial envy (the victim likes to imitate the victorious, the process of

adaptation and imitation); the question of how much of what we take from culture/art goes

into the fabric of what we produce; transfer (whether there are national constraints affecting

transfer); guilt (a climate of atonement, whether World Literature is an academic practice or a

process of atonement); exteriority (looking outside ourselves, questioning our position);

enlightenment (how much can we learn about ourselves/humanity from Comparative

Literature? Is this what we’re pursuing?).

Terence Cave talked about the ‘bottom-up’ process within Comparative Literature, the need for

a hands-on approach and the connection between literary criticism and the material world. He

spoke about the limits of universalism – we cannot theorise end points because doing so

falsifies the picture. He noted that the theme of ‘power’ had come up frequently in the

conference but said that power issues are common to most human activity. This doesn’t mean

we should always use power as an explanatory frame. Professor Cave finished by suggesting

that it is time for a thorough reappraisal of inherited theories and methodologies.

Discussion kicked off with a remark about Modern Languages teaching in the USA being

systematically shut down, and whether we should be concerned that English seems to be at the

centre of everything. This led to a larger debate about teaching national versus ‘World’

literature. It was noted that educational institutions tend to prioritise national literature but

that we are seeing a rise in syllabi which allow for Comparative studies. Some members of the

floor wondered if we are too worried about knowing foreign languages and what the nature of

the relationship between language and thought entails: do words in one language, for instance

embody something that cannot be transferred? Equally, are some kinds of writing more fixed in

language than others? Someone suggested that linguistic knowledge can be used to decentre

oneself, a foreign language providing the means to access something previously unexplored. It

was remarked that no one is a true comparatist; rather, we are all part of one ‘ideal

comparatist’ collaboratively.

Discussion moved on to the subject of the cannibalisation of the humanities at the hands of the

social sciences. The social sciences, someone stated, endeavour to create a single society with

its own infrastructures. However, literature stands apart from this as it is mobile and has

longevity. Therefore, literature can help to transfer culture but it is often overlooked by the

social sciences. Literature has the ability to cross borders, it can bring together different

positionalities, but we should recall that the horizon can never be reached as it will always

recede.

Finally, Ben Morgan asked what our object of study really is: it is not texts, paintings etc. but,

rather, it is the cultural processes through which we make our lives meaningful. Are we

undergoing a revolution of humanity? To be a ‘new human’ is to occupy no position but to think

in terms of movement. As comparatists we have to ask who we are and how our critical process

can help us move towards an answer.