ABSTRACT
This article deals with the rise of comparative literature in the Netherlands. It discusses the role the discipline played in the nineteenth century, focusing on the relationship between comparative literature and related disciplines such as comparative linguistics and comparative mythology, on the principles on which comparative literature was based, and finally on its results. Emerging in the second half of the century, the discipline remained an auxiliary branch of Dutch studies, where it would eventually break through. Thus it helped to give Dutch philology a more international bent and prompted it to become more professional, adopting a positivistic and deterministic methodology.
