The Theory of “World Literature” or “Weltliterature”
The idea of “world literature” or “Weltliterater Welt” in German means the world” and “literatur” is “literature”) emerged in Germany. William Jones, an official of the East India Company in Calcutta, translated Kalidasa into English. German Romantic poet Goethe was also impressed after reading the translation of Kalidasa’s Abhijanashakuntalam. Philosopher Schlegel also came under the spell of Sanskrit literature. Goethe and Schlegel noted that something unites literary works from other languages and from other parts of the world and that there could be and there should be an ideal world literature.
In Europe, each nation believed that its cultural pinnacle is represented by its literature. Each country felt that its over national literature is unique and superior in some way or the other to other national literatures, either in terms of its own antiquity or in terms of its own literary geniuses. The French could not bring themselves to accept that an English writer could be superior to the French literary heritage. The Germans preferred to praise Shakespeare as a genius instead of acknowledging French literature as the epitome of perfection. There are different strands in this idea of “World Literature”. First is the Romantic Movement and its impact on writers and culture historians.
Second is the accidental discovery of Sanskrit literature by some of the Englishmen working in India. Third is the German writers were impressed by Sanskrit literature, especially Kalidasa. The fourth element is the national rivalry. All these elements give rise to the idea and theory of “World Literature”.
Theories of Comparative Literature
Europeans felt that they needed to study other national literatures in Europe to make better sense of their own literature. The notion of national literature arises from the political development of the emergence of the nation-state in Europe from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards in Europe. This also coincided and was sometimes preceded by the cultural development when Europeans in different parts identified themselves as English, French, German and Italian and used their own languages for creative and other purposes, replacing the cosmopolitan Latin which prevailed across Europe in scholarly circles.
The Roman Catholic Church also used Latin as the language of the Bible and of the church services. When Martin Luther led the Protestant revolt against the Roman Catholic Church, he revolted against Latin. Luther translated the Bible into German to make it accessible to common people. So, nation, language literature and culture become identified with each other and this was the root of the comparative literature in Europe.
There were some common dominant ideas. One of them was the Romantic Movement and the ideas of universalism it inspired. In simple Comparative Literature terms, study the novels of a British, French, Germar or Russian author is sufficient. However, while doing a theory of comparative literature, it is important to identify a comm3 thread in the works themselves and the ideas. Comparing Shakespearean tragedy with that of the French playwrights of the classical period of the 17th century, which is to be found in the plays of Corneille or Racine, is the simplest form.
The more general comparison between Greek tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy has been made. Discussing the idea of tragedy as conceived by the Greeks. This is to be inferred in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Finding out the constituents of a modern European tragedy as seen in the plays of Henrik Ibsen is another aspect. The study of novels across national literatures in Europe, both in terms of technique as well as the view of life expressed through the works, was also covered.
On the poetics of Dostoevsky’s novels, Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin makes an observation on the technique that Dostoevsky has used in his novels. Bakhtin says: “A plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, a genuine polyphony of fully valid voices is in fact the chief characteristic of Dostoevsky’s novels.” He says: “Dostoevsky is the creator of the polyphonic novel. He created a fundamentally new novelistic genre. Therefore, hi work does not fit any of the pre-conceived frameworks or historic-literary schemes that we usually apply to various species the European novel.”
Bakhtin studies the Dostoevskian novel in the context of the European novell He notes that a Dostoevskian novel is not like a Gustav Flaubert novel in France. He speaks of the novel in general. He talks about the technique, but he implies that Dostoevsky uses what he calls the Polyphonie Novel to reflect the complex reality where many characters with their own consciousness exist along with the consciousness of the author. He could not have pinpointed the peculiarity of Dostoevskian novel without the European novel in mind, and without an idea of the theory of the novel
Bakhtin’s idea of the “Polyphonic Novel’ is an indirect contribution to the theory of the novel. This is possible only in 2 comparative literature context. Bakhtin’s view is only one of the many views about Dostoevsky and about the novel and th. there are other views to be considered. It is possible to discuss different theories of novel arising from different national literatures and it becomes an exercise in the theory of comparative literature.
A theory of comparative literature could involve the discussion of the theory of tragedy, the theory of the novel and leads to an elaboration of the historical and cultural contexts of tragic drama in classical Greece, in Elizabethan England and in modern Europe, and the social and literary background to the theory and practice of the novel. The theory of comparative literature thus arises from the study of plays and novels and poems from different countries and periods. The recent theories of post-colonialism, multi-culturalism, liberalisation and globalization emerged in the context of the theory of comparative literature.
Post-colonialism :
After the Asian and African countries became politically independent, they continued with the literary modernism and it forms developed during the European colonial rule. The European comparative literature practitioners could not leave out the former colonies in their literary discussions since some of these colonised people were writing in the language of the colonisers and others were using the literary forms of the colonisers in their own languages. The Europeans brought the former colonised peoples’ modern literatures into the circle of study and debate felt to make their own literary discussion or discourse richer.
In post-colonial studies, one of the issues was the terms of relationship between the former colonisers and the former colonised and the debate took place mostly in the western universities and many of the dominant scholars were from the West. Over a period of time, the equation changed when scholars from Asia and Africa debated post-colonial comparative literature and showed how the former colonised people subverted the literary forms and expressions of the former colonisers. During the colonial period, literature was used by the people of the colonised countries as a political weapon to fight the coloniser. The colonised people used literature and culture as parts of the freedom struggle.
Two other trends borrowed from European political and cultural trends also emerged. The first was Marxism and the second, feminism. Besides taking pride in the nation, literature was also to be used to voice the agonies and aspirations of the oppressed classes and this was represented by the Marxist trend in literature. One of the ways to become modern was also to enable women to come out and join the work force and the political fight for freedom. This gave rise to literature with strong women characters, but this did not give the feminism label until the 1970s when the feminist movement picked up momentum in the West.
Marxism and feminism could easily become parts of comparative literature and its theory because the phenomenon of the oppressed sections of a society, including women could be studied across national literatures of Europe, Asia and Africa. Post-colonialism studies could not have lasted too long because Asian and African countries moved away from their colonial experiences and a few decades into their own independent existence, they had to face other kinds of the literary ang cultural challenges, which did not have the Western reference point.
Multi-culturalism :
Multi-culturalism emerged after the Westerners, that is Europeans and north Americans, faced with a significant chunk of immigrants from other countries and these immigrants brought with them their own cultural histories. Multi-culturalism brought a new perspective in comparative literature. One of the basic ideas of multi-culturalism has been that all cultural traditions, including literary, were treated on an equal footing, and there was no hierarchy about the value of each tradition. The texts of other cultural traditions were read on their own terms. The theory of multi-culturalism made the case for cultural pluralism in a democratic society. This phenomenon and a theory on this were confined to the United States and to a certain extent to Britain.
Liberalisation :
Liberalisation means allowing foreign investors, manufacturers and traders into a country and removing the barriers that obstructed such exchanges. It also refers to allowing things from outside the country in the cultural sphere. For instance, Western popular music influencing young people and their music and musical tastes in Asian and African countries. Liberalisation has also happened in literature. For example, Hindi writer Nirmal Varma’s novels and short stories have a distinct European flavour and tone which came from the personal experience of the writer and he used it effectively in his writing.
Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, has used Western trends and tastes and techniques. Critics say allowing foreign manufacturers and traders into the country lead to economic slavery and it poses a danger the culture of the country. Some of the culture critics in Asian and African countries want to preserve and protect the country’s cultural forms even as they accept the point that foreign investors and manufacturers add to the economic wealth of the country.
Comparative Literature takes a conservative turn where it is argued that different literary traditions are in danger of being swept away by the economic liberalisation and liberalization should be opposed. In the context of liberalisation, the focus should be on keeping the many literary traditions alive, each with its own identity.
Globalisation :
Liberalisation leads to globalisation. In compara-tive literature, globalisation makes comparative study irrelevant. Paul Jay talks about the complications in literary studies, including comparative literature due to globalisation. He says that English literature, particularly the novel, has been produced by an increasingly transnational, multi-cultural group of writers, working in disparate parts of the world. They explore the intersecting effects of colonialism, decolonisation, migration, economic and cultural globalisation.
The settings are metropolitan West or involves characters whose experience shifts back and forth between the Western metropole and the formerly colonised countries from which their families came. Examples are the Booker-prize winning The Inheritance of Loss and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies among other writings. Post-colonialism then takes the “transnational turn” but it does not abandon the national identity issue, and therefore of national literature.
In the two Indian novels mentioned above, it is clear that though written in English, they are works ‘translation’ at a deeper psychic and cultural levels Of course, this is not an entirely unprecedented happening. Joseph Conral writing is peopled by characters from different countries floating in a metropolitan world. This is to be clearly seen in his novels Under Western Eyes and in Nostromo, and in his novella, The Heart of Darkness.
The Theory of Comparative Literature faces the challenge of grappling with globalisation and what it means for literatures produced in different languages. Do they display the homogenisation that is supposed to be the evil consequence of globalisation? Or do they retain their distinct identities while dealing with it?
Translation :
In a theoretical sense, translation is an integral part of Comparative Literature, which implies studies of texts from two or more different languages. Translation means if one is a polyglot and is conversant with the two or three languages of the texts she/he is dealing with, practice, the different texts are being spoken of or written about only in one of the languages.
For example, if you know Marathi and Hindi and discussing a Marathi poem in Hindi or a Hindi short story in Marathi, you are engaged in a translation activity. In translation, the ideas and emotions, and the texture of the language are discussed in a language other than that of the text in question. In Comparative Literature, the relationship between languages are discussed.
There might be similarities between languages but there are no exact mathematical equivalents between two languages! Translation is not confined to works of literature in two languages, it also holds good for a novel that is made into a film, even if both are in the same language. The verbalisation that is the basis of a novel has to be translated into images in a film.
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