ABSTRACT
Today we can no longer speak of a fixed number of ‘pillars upholding the edifice of Comparative Literature’s subject matter’ (trans. from Weisstein 1968: 107). The contemporary discussion of the organization of the subject and the definition of borders and hierarchies within it, some of which were given in Chapter 1, is of such variety as to defy summary.1 The ‘pillars’ named by Ulrich Weisstein in his Introduction of 1968-literary epochs, periods and movements, genres, the history of subjects and motifs and the mutual elucidation of the arts —now give way to an ‘uncertainty of category’ (Koelb and Noakes 1988:11), with comparative literature today considered ‘to be less a set of practices…and more a shared perspective that sees literary activity as involved in a complex web of cultural relations’ (ibid.). Despite this tendency to uncertainty in comparative literature, I would like to put forward a structural proposition for the evolving discipline of comparative children’s literature. It will divide up the field and delineate its areas of study It is the first proposal of its kind and can only be enhanced by future discussion and modification.
