ABSTRACT

If comparative literature lacked the solid boundaries of other academic specializations, it could avoid being walled in by them too, and so could welcome unlikely topics, disciplinary collisions, things without a name, art forms without a nation. From its nineteenth-century inception, comparative literature has imagined itself as the locus from which it would be possible to describe and relate the literary productions of all times, peoples, and languages. Approaches to comparative literature that offer a historical narrative of the diffusion of cultural capital from Europe to the less fortunate areas of the world find a hearty welcome, because such globalization stories, although eminently questionable on historical grounds, comfort the biases of our institutions and our public. Despite the wide circulation of a number of technical terms, available to any comparatist wishing to describe an unfamiliar work, the domain of comparative literature is not organized in the same way as that of linguistics.