ABSTRACT
In contrast to mainstream narratives of comparative literature, which stress the emergence of transnational literary comparisons as a disciplinary field in its own right, the earliest manifestos and programs show that comparative literature was first conceptualized as a subdiscipline of literary history. Comparative literary history is necessarily a metadiscourse, self-conscious about its choices and about the social and political as well as aesthetic hierarchies that frame the meanings and value of texts. Jean-Jacques Ampère’s vision of a literary history of “all peoples” reminds of the limits of (Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, CHLEL) working on “the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages,” which precludes the broad metahistory and theory that might be propelled by a consideration of the literatures of India, China, or Mesoamerican codices.
