Octavia Wulandari (AG1) 40300113001

The Challenge of Comparative Literature (SUMMARY)

Part I
The Emergence of Comparative Literature
Claudio Guillen, an acclaimed comparatist, takes this up as the central
question in his book The Challenge of Comparative Literature, published in 1993. He
is thinking about Comparative Literature at a juncture when it has emerged out of a
series of debates, when it is still shrouded by waves of unresolved dilemma, when it
is threatened to be replaced by disciplines like Cultural Studies or Translation Studies.
Guillen emphasizes that since time writes itself into literature or any other form of
art, the disjuncture of space, the sense of discontinuous time, of a partitioned self, a
collection of heterogeneous fragments of a whole constantly challenge the idea of a
monolithic holistic experience.
Comparative literature (a conventional and not very enlightening label) is
usually understood to consist of a certain tendency or branch of literary
investigation that involves the systematic study of supranational
assemblages. page 3 (Claudio Guillen)

Part II
The Local and Universal
The second part of the book is geared towards the methodologies of
Comparative Literature and a schematic categorization of the directions that this field
of study achieves. Claudio Guillen engages in the already prevailing network of
scholarship and branches of literary Guillen history, subscribing to them, extending
them, challenging them or deconstructing them, in his enterprise of understanding
the discipline from his posited perspective. Relevant to the core idea of Claudio

Guillens inquiry into comparative Literature is his definition of the comparatist as

one who dares to pester friends and colleagues, not just once but over and over.
This conveys a sense of constant questioning, of working along 29 contradictions that
never allow the walls around the discipline to settle.
In accordance with the focus of the French School, Guillen asserts that
Comparative Literature as an activity is a mode of literary communication. He
attempts to analyze the characteristics of this literary communication, how genres,
themes and forms interact within this channel, and eventually undergo
metamorphosis. He is definitely hinting at contact across cultures, lending
Comparative Literature with not an international characteristic but a supranational
one. The distinction between the international and the supranational is one of the key
issues in Guillens case for Comparative Literature. Supranational as opposed to
international implies a channel of communication that transcends the influence of
borders held by nations rather it emphasizes on a point of departure that is not
pivoted in national literatures, nor in the interrelationship between them. The
supranational identity of literary history signifies a phenomenon in which a dialogue
and mutual illumination of art takes place along a different principle that is beyond
the empirical contact of national identities. This supranational characteristic is
perhaps better explained through the dialectic of the local and the universal that faces
a comparatist. The dilemma between the local and the universal exists in overlaps
with quite a few set of binaries like the particular and the general, the one and the
many, the individual and the system through which one has to approach the
historiography of Comparative Literature.
In Local and Universal, Guillen stated that different and often opposing aims
attract and lure the critics situation, although the options are reduced to four primary
ones: first, the gap between an artistic inclination (the enjoyment of literature as art)

and a social preoccupation (the work as an act, a response to the imperfections and
deficiencies of the historical environs of man); second, the difference between the
practical (the interpretation of particular texts) and the theoretical (the explanation
explicit or not, of certain premises and of a significant order); third, the distinction
between the individual (the single work, the in mistakable writer, the originality the
cultivated and written literature makes possible) and the system (the whole, the
genre, the historical configuration, the generational movement, the inertia of
writing); and, finally, the tension between the local and the universal that confronts
comparatist in particular.
Local Nation, region or country
Universal General
It is also true that comparative do not operate within a sphere of extreme worldliness,
of up rootedness, abstraction, a cosmopolitanism, in distorted view of things that
reflect neither the real itinerary of literary history not the concrete coordinate of
poetic exaction.
E.g.: the comparison between Don Quixote & Orlando Furiosso

Orlando Furiosso was parody of works very much like romances of chivalry,
and focus literature as an art (Local)

Don Quixote focused on pastoral literature, the work as an act. (universal)

Part III
The One and the Many
In the part III Guillen questioning a premise of comparative studies- the
horizon of the critic and historian this time- a condition of modern culture, a theme
of final reflection. In his previous chapter he explains that the polarity of the local and
the universal is enmeshed with the debate of monoism and pluralism. Comparative
Literature is saddled with the responsibility of being dialectical, of charting a literary
history from the conception of literature that is not a finished premise but a dynamic
process, of literature that is more precisely a body of cultural tools. A defining quality
of Comparative Literature is its inherent methodology that on one hand emphasizes
on dialogue between certain fundamental structures of literatures with distinct
linguistic and national configurations through time and on the other change,
evolution and historicity of literature and society across space. Both the channels
allow themes, genres and images to travel across the temporal and spatial
coordinates. Guillen explains that there are two basic coordinates, the one spatial and
the other temporal will help to determine and define the dialogue of literature.
The experiences of multiplicity in the universe is common and easily observed,
whereas the concept of the universe in its organic and unifying aspect does in fact
appear highly ambition to us as soon as we leave aside the laws of the natural sciences
and instead begin to consider historical events, social or political institutions, cultural
creations, and among these last, literature- whose unity debatable from the point of
view of the majority of those who dedicate themselves to studying it, comparatist
included.

Part IV
Romantic Ideals
It is well known that studies of comparative literature in the modern sense
began during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, most
noticeably in France. A landmark occasion known to all was the series of lectures given
in Paris with great success by Abel Francois Villemain (1790-1870). Abel Francois
Villemain, a noted scholar, engaged with the questions of Comparative Literature in
1828 and 1829. The emergence of this approach coincided with the literary period of
Romantic French poetry. After the Napoleonic wars, the idea of cultural supremacy of
France, its pride in national literature marked the study of Comparative Literature. An
interesting historical paradox emerged from here: As a number of modern literatures
came to be recognized, the idea of a unitary poetics of literature broke. With the steep
sense of the rise of nationalism, an internationalism also marked Comparative
Literature.
Mostly romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and
individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval
rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the
aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific
rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and
literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, and the natural
sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, and while for much of the
Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect
on the growth of nationalism was perhaps more significant.
The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of
aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension,

horror and terror, and aweespecially that experienced in confronting the new
aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature. It considered folk art and
ancient custom to be noble statuses, but also valued spontaneity, as in the musical
impromptu. In contrast to the rational and Classicist ideal models, Romanticism
revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically
medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, and
industrialism.
The more precise characterization and specific definition of Romanticism has
been the subject of debate in the fields of intellectual history and literary history
throughout the 20th century, without any great measure of consensus emerging. That
it was part of the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of
Enlightenment, is generally accepted in current scholarship. Its relationship to the
French Revolution, which began in 1789 in the very early stages of the period, is
clearly important, but highly variable depending on geography and individual
reactions. Most Romantics can be said to be broadly progressive in their views, but a
considerable number always had, or developed, a wide range of conservative views,
and nationalism was in many countries strongly associated with Romanticism, as
discussed in detail below.
In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or
criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children,
the isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several
romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, based their
writings on the supernatural/occult and human psychology. Romanticism tended to
regard satire as something unworthy of serious attention, a prejudice still influential
today.

The precursors of Romanticism in English poetry go back to the middle of the

18th century, including figures such as Joseph Warton (headmaster at Winchester
College) and his brother Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.
Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were the chief qualities of a poet.
Thomas Chatterton is generally considered the first Romantic poet in English. The
Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism
with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring
both Goethe and the young Walter Scott. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work
involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed was earlier literature that they had
discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. The Gothic novel,
beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important
precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic
picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the early revival of
Gothic architecture. Tristram Shandy, a novel by Laurence Sterne (175967)
introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational sentimental novel to the English
literary public.
Part V
The Compromises of Positivism
The first steps of the new discipline are well known. During the Romantic
years, there are two preoccupations that stand out according to Alexandru
Gioranescu: the reestablishment of the unity of literature and the study of the
relations between one nation and another.
At the end of the century comparatists adapted Romantic internationalism and
syncretism in this retreat in order to reconcile the two predominant tendencies of the
time: the insistence on a national character ology and on the prestige of the biological

sciences. It was believed that every literature exists, breathes, grows, and involves like
a living being, its roots anchored in a certain social subsoil and certain national
idiosyncrasies.
Part VI
Weltliteratur
The term Weltliteratur enunciated by Goethe in 1827 came to be gradually
enhanced. If it is translated as literature of the world, it makes possible the dialogue
between the local and the universal, the one and the many that to this day forms the
basic premise of Comparative Literature. The most important aspect of it is that of
literature which talks of the world, of deepest experiences, of images that signify
nature and sensibilities across cultures. This bestows literature with its essential
supranational quality.
Over the course of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, the
rising tide of nationalism led to an eclipse of interest in world literature, but in the
postwar era, comparative and world literature began to enjoy a resurgence in the
United States. As a nation of immigrants, and with a less well established national
tradition than many older countries possessed, the United States became a thriving
site for the study of comparative literature (often primarily at the graduate level) and
of world literature, often taught as a first-year general education class. The focus
remained largely on the Greek and Roman classics and the literatures of the major
modern Western European powers, but a confluence of factors in the late 1980s and
early 1990s led to a greater openness to the wider world. The end of the Cold War,
the growing globalization of the world economy, and new waves of immigration from
many parts of the world led to several efforts to open out the study of world
literature. This change is well illustrated by the expansion of The Norton Anthology of

World Masterpieces, whose first edition of 1956 featured only Western European and
North American works, to a new expanded edition of 1995 with substantial nonWestern selections, and with the title changed from masterpieces to the less
exclusive Literature. The major survey anthologies today, including those published
by Longman and by Bedford in addition to Norton, all showcase several hundred
authors from dozens of countries.
Guillen claims that the term Weltliteratur is extremely vague-in positive way
it is too suggestive, and is therefore open to many misunderstandings. He stated that
there are three other groups of meanings. First: the presence of some poets and some
poetries that can be of the world and for all the world, for everybody. Not limited
to watertight national compartments, literatures can be accessible to future readers
of a growing number of countries. The universality of the literary phenomenon is
increasing. Second: works that in their real itinerary, their acceptance or rejection by
different readers, critics, or translators, have circulated throughout the world. These
necessarily include translations, transits, and studies of reception aesthetics, close to
what the first French comparative studies would become. And the third meaning:
poems that reflect the world, that speak perhaps for all men and all women of the
deepest, most common, or most lasting human experiences: the romantic exaltation
of the poet.
Today the concept of Weltliteratur raises certain difficulties, as we have
already seen. Perhaps the most interesting and suggestive one is the
distinction between the international and the supranational. These two
dimensions implicate each other and should not suppress but rather
foster the encounter between localization and meaning, an encounter
that gives rise to a certain literary impulse, as we pointed out earlier. The
greatest distances, those that most impede communication and
understanding, are perhaps not international but intertemporal.
Claudio Guillen.

Part VII
The French Hour
Taking it up from here, how does the French School feed into the study of
Comparative Literature? Claudio Guillen rather calls it the French Hour signifying a
period of time stretching from the nineteenth century to the end of Second World
War when the French comparatists dominated the field of Comparative Literature.
They, distinctively, focused on the study of connections between national literatures,
the phenomenon of influence, transmission and communications. They were majorly
concerned with the study of images (imagology), study of reception as
communication and the study of international literary relations with of course France
as either the giver or the receiver. The role of intermediaries became important
during the French Hour as the focus was directed towards reception studies.
Thus came forth the theoretical distinction between the fortune and successthe influence, readership, sale were identified as the writers fortune while success
was understood as a quantitative category of fortune measured by the number of
editions, adaptations, translations of work. Lacunae like the positivist conception of
literary influences i.e. looking only at the uninterrupted flow of one component into
the other, atomism i.e. isolating a singular work as the sufficient object of study of the
French Hour allowed for the American Hour to set in after the Second World War.
In this chapter Guillen explains that the opposition between the French
school and the American school in comparative literature is only too well known.
And the conventional labels are as rudimentary as they are inadequate. Theoretically,
we find ourselves confronted by two opposing models, one international and the
other supranational: but in practice, the two models are intertwined. The French hour
allowed space for investigation of very different types, but the studies were based on

national literatures-on their preeminence-and on the connections between them.

Major emphasis was placed on the phenomena of influence, transmission,
communication, transit (passage), or the link between activities and works belonging
to different national spheres.
Guillen had just mentioned in this chapter that the existence of that gateway
to comparative studies, which is the intermediarys knowledge and his different
personifications. At the same time, comparatist investigated what was called la
fortune dun ecrivain (a writers luck, or fortune). Instead of looking for the gateway,
they went looking for the exit. The intermediaries made possible the passage of a text
A to certain texts B, C, and D, before B, C, and D were published, by means of a factor
i. A diagram of this process would then be:
A i B, C, D.
After the appearance of D, the final balance sheet of the consequences of a
work---its influence, effect, success, diffusion, readership, and sale --- was the writes
fortune. The diagram then becomes:
A i B, C, D, f of A.
The fortune or success of a writer, genre, or movement is a process that
follows the publication of a literary work. The extent of this process can be calibrated,
measured sociologically. (The editor is perhaps a sociologist without realizing it, but
only up to certain point, if it is a question of writers in fashion.) For quite a few years
now, fortunes and reputations have taken on strange shapes. At times, the
unpredictable, capricious, and tangled events connected with literary influences lead
the comparatist to ponder the complexity and peculiar character of the history of
literatures.

There were three principal deficiencies, that Guillen have already mentioned,
that existed alongside the preeminence of national literatures. The first one concerns
the positivist conception of literary influences. Mental or imaginative events, like
physical, chemical, or biological ones, were thought to obey the principle of
conversation of matter, of the transmutation of certain elements into others
organized differently. Second, the earlier interest in influences was not a
manifestation of the obsession genetica that appears to us so typical of the nineteenth
century. In third place, the tendency to isolate a singular work, converting it into a
unique or sufficient object of study, has been called atomism.
Part VIII
The American Hour
Contradictory to the French hour, the American Hour gathered scholars from
different origins to work on the same soil .It focus on the universal humanizing nature
of literature and the other arts added a much needed orientation to the study of
Comparative Literature. The Second World War had devastated European civilizations
and thus confines of narrow nationalism began to be refuted. Interdisciplinary
studies, an equivalent of the dominant cultural phenomenon of the melting point
theory acquired primary focus Following the Second World War and the dominance
of the American School of Comparative Literature the major directions or
classifications of the field of Comparative Literature became vivid.
Part IX
Litterature Generale and Literary Theory
Outdated though it may seem to us today, it is worthwhile to recall the old
argument that gave rise to the idea of literature generale, and not simply because it
still surfaces from time to time. Comparative literature would donate the study of

relations between two or more literatures; binary contacts-between work and work,
work and author, author and author- would assure these connections.
The study of genres or genology, the formal proceeding or morphology, the
study of themes or thematology, the study of literary relations or internationality and
the historical configuration or historiology may be listed as the primary
methodological tools of Comparative Literature. Genres form a categorizing unit of
literary studies, looked upon as models with particular markers that can be placed
with literary systems or poly systems to understand the evolution of different forms.
What fuels the evolution one genre from another, or the dominance of a particular
genre at a moment in history?
Guillen notes that a writer might find the existing genre to be inadequate for
his creative sensibility or may be his sensibility finds home in a structure that existed
much before in historical time. These structures of feeling stretch the boundaries of
an existing genre or makes a previous genre evolve according to the artistic need. A
structure might also have certain elements that can be recovered by significant
elements, characters, behavior or emotional attitude. Again each genre has its
efficacy pivoted to a historical time that is in turn characterized by specific lived
realities and modes of expression. These currents crisscross to form a literary genre
or make one disappear. One may be able to categorize literature from a diachronic
perspective through the journey of genres. It is important to note that when we
talking about the evolution of genres and their disappearances across time, we are
considering the process of contact and contract across time.
For almost thirty years, literary theory has obviously enjoyed an astonishing
boom- uncomfortable and disturbing for many. It is important not to mix up the
property of the term theory with the occasions that arise to use the adjective
theoretical. Thais is, the profusion of theoretical writings that we read-writings that

contain an intense theoretical charge, like so many electrified, objects- is inversely

proportional to the actually quite small number of produced or developed theories.
There is little doubt that comparatists learn a great deal from no comparatists.
Certainly quite a few comparatist have maintained a conservative stance, and the
most recent theoretical ideas usually come from other fields. But conservative or
conformist, it would be rash to adopt and reflect immediately the actual status quo,
no matter how innovative it might be. In addition, this hasty adoption puts us in
position of incoherence, in a chaos of perspectives, in an out-and-out marginal state.
Comparativism at least knows the problems it faces. In comforting them, it is
imperative that present-day comparatist admits that the theory of literature is a
challenge for them at least as fundamental and necessary as general literature was
for their predecessors. In sum, the, the internal structure of our discipline is the
tension or polarity that exists between grades of theoreticity.
Part X
Three Models of Supranationality
Guillen classified three models of supranationality that are presented to
students of comparative literature.
1. The most recent model is the study of phenomena and supranational
assemblages that imply internationality, that is, suggest either genetic
contacts or other relations between authors and processes belonging to
distinct national spheres or common cultural premises.
E.g. the picaresque novel and the theme of Don Juan.
2. When phenomena or processes that are genetically independent, or belong to
different civilizations, are collected and brought together for study, such an

examination can be justified and carried out to the extent that common
sociohistorical conditions are implied.
E.g. the development of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe and in
seventeenth-century Japan.
3. Some genetically independent phenomena make up supranational entities in
accordance with principles and purposes derived from the theory of literature.
This model has the highest grade of theoreticity, since the conceptual
framework, instead of being pragmatic or merely adequate in the face of the
observable facts, usually provides a point of departure for the investigation or
for the problem to be resolved.
Part XI
Taxonomies
In the past many comparatists have arranged and classified their materials and
fundamental objectives by proposing taxonomies, hierarchies, and other subdivisions
of their field of study. In a 1943 article Renato Poggioli concluded that at the end of
the nineteenth century there were four primary directions of investigation in
comparative literature: first, the thematic, or the study of folkloric themes, the origins
and transmigrations of legends and medieval tales. Second, the morphological
direction, or study of genres and forms, which at that time meant above all the
Darwinian theory of evolution des genres. Third, the identification of sources, or
crenologia, from the Greek Krene spring); and fourth, the examination of the fortuna
(luck) of a writer, which in turn meant paying attention to intermediaries involved in
the fortuna-journals, translations, and so on.
The taxonomy for the study of translation is intended to serve as a theoretical
framework to be applied in the study of translation including applied studies of single

as well as several texts in translation. The study of translation has been traditionally
an area of comparative literature and thus translation studies is accorded focus in the
field of "comparative cultural studies," a field that combines traditional comparative
literature with new knowledge in both comparative literature and cultural studies:
Comparative cultural studies is a field of study in the humanities and social sciences
where tenets of the discipline of comparative literature are merged with the field of
cultural studies. In comparative cultural studies the objects of study are culture and
culture products including literature, the visual arts, media, performance, ritual, etc.,
and extending to such areas of culture as the history of communication (e.g., the
history of the book, etc.)
According to A. Owen Aldridge (1969) he list five principal areas of
investigation.
1. Literary criticism and theory,
2. Literary movements,
3. Literary themes,
4. Literary forms,
5. Literary relations.
Guillen already mentioned that comparative literature has been and is an
intellectual discipline characterized by the posing of certain problems that only
comparative literature is in a position to confront.

Part XII
Genre: Genology
The matter of literary genres is one of the essentially contested concepts that
has played a leading role in the history of poetics since the time of Aristotle. Guillen
pointed the six aspects of literary genres.
1. Historically, genre were thought of as occupying a terrain whose components
evolve over centuries, as ever changing models for which we must find a place
in a literary system or poly system that sustains a definite moment in the
evolution of poetic form. (E.g. in nineteenth-century Russia, the letter, the
personal diary, and the serialized novel). In addition, the formalist perspectivehistorical-evolutionist and agonistic-encompassed not only the genres, the
methods, styles, and even the concept of literature itself but also the premises
on which we base our reader; and therefore, even the study or the science of
literature.
2. Sociologically, literature is not only an institution but genres as well:
subgenres, or istituti, as some Italian critics say. Guillen not referring to
sociology of literature, but to the components and classes of literature itself
considered as established and conditioned social complexes.
3. Pragmatically, genre implies not only contact but contracts. The reader has
expectations of certain genres. If these are popular, oral, or commercial
artistic forms- the story, the epic poem, the detective novel, the horror movie,
the western-the matter is very clear. The innovative writer understands this
and often relies on it to fabricate his surprises.
4. Structurally, genre has been considered not only as an isolated element but
also as part of a whole-that is, of a complex of options, alternatives,
interrelations. Confronting the ideal space of the models of an era, the writer

chooses a particular genre from the range of models available at a certain

time. Some genres are contragenres or works whose origin is contageneric. In
sum, the concept of function links not only the single work but also the genre
with the whole, evolution with the continuity, and the critics historical and
structural perspectives.
5. Logically, the genre acts primarily as a mental model. This ideal or conceptual
aspect of genre is what the critic loses sight of as soon as he limits himself to
saying s book is a novel or Ys work is utopian. From this point of view, it
becomes necessary to confront the problem posed by geneta mixta far from
scarce in the history of literature.
6. Comparatively, the examination of necessity comparative in nature, of the
range of a genre is both delicate and decisive. Even though a critical reading
of a single work from the point of view of the genre or genres to which it
belong can be very effective, genology clearly cannot be limited to that one
procedure.
Part XIII
Forms: Morphology
The modalities that extend the markers of a genre are also based in story of
reception, in which the structure of feeling of the time and the horizon of expectation
of the readers implicate the genre. So a genre, like the European novel of the
nineteenth century, is not an isolated entity but it is part of a whole- part of a complex
web of alternatives, options, confrontations of models, and an assimilation of
elements across time. For a comparatist, the a study of genre may thus reveal how it
travelled across literary models embedded in time, why it drew upon certain
formalistic elements for the creative expression of its sort, how a similar genre that is
marginal in one culture is dominant in another. This also widens the field of literary

study, not just restricting it to the study of European models. It is a plurality of

paradigms.
Guillen qualifies genres as conventional models that comprise the thematic
as well as the formalistic elements. While the form is always in dialogue with the
content, the study of forms is designated as morphology. He suggests certain stylistic
literary devices such as dialogue, digression, defamiliarization as elements of a form.
A digression may purposefully signify something or signify nothing in a narrative
.There is no pure form because he emphasizes that a narrative always has an interplay
of forms. While examining forms there are several enmeshed levels of stratification
like that of the phonic, the grammatical, the prosodic, the poetic, the theatrical and
others.
The study of themes or thematology is intrinsically linked to genology or
morphology. Thematological study is relevant to the comparatist depending on the
historical panorama available to him and the significance of intertextuality that allows
him to connect representations of similar themes in other texts. Themes in their study
are identified either as structuring theme, significant theme or inciting theme.
A conceptual understanding of the terms like theme, motif, image, situation, type,
topoi and commonplaces form the bulk of thematology. Images are explained as
significant visual entities like, the whiteness of Moby Dick that is a code in the
narrative.
There are certain symbolic scenes or situations like the decent to the
underworld in epics, the flattery of the seductress that are lined to genres across
cultures. Then there are moral, social or professional types like the fool, the miser
with specific narratives and characteristics. The themes are thus active or passive: that
what the writer draws from the world and then modifies, transforms or overturns to
say what she wants to say. There has been a debate over the concepts of primary

theme and principal motif. Scholars like Trousson claim that motif precedes theme.
Thus the situation of a man between two women, conflict between two brothers is
the basic situation or motif. An individualization, particular expression of this motif is
theme. Frenzel names it in the opposite direction. What comes out of it is a passage
from the general to the particular, how a preliterary sketch, an idea is aesthetically
treated in literature. Thus, the journey of the theme of rebellion to the motif of
Prometheus or vice versa.
All of these methodologies call forth the domain of literary relationship or
internationality. How genres interact across historical time, how a themes travel
across cultures, how literary systems flow into one another is a matter of influences
and literary relations. Pertinent to the study of comparative Literature are questions
of what makes the diffusion of a work possible, what is the object of study in
intertextuality? The concept of intertextuality is not just a detailed study of external
influences, presence of biographical evidences but rather implies resonances of a
deeper structure. Thus, while talking about literary relationships Claudio Guillen reasserts that every text is an intertext. It contains a number of texts at the level of
social language, cultural codes, formulas, rhythmic models and literary systems. Thus
translation is a process within this chain of literary contact, a channel of
communication. The last appendage co-related to each of these is the narrative of
continuities and discontinuities of genres, themes and forms- we are moving towards
the concept of historiology.
Literary history is based on the fundamental concepts of periods, currents,
school, movement and etc. The obstacle is to move out from the confines of specific
countries and look at it from a holistic perspective. An overarching dilemma facing the
field of study is the distinction between the history of literature and literary history.
Perhaps re-iterating a few questions evoked by Guillen is a mode of launching into

this discussion. What are the intertemporal forms that determine the continuities and
discontinuities? What narrative tactics do literary histories draw upon? What do they
have in common with fictitious or invented histories? Two contrasting models
respond to the dilemma. One is the model of discontinuity that stresses on how
principle characteristic dominate one literary period for a certain number of years and
then fade. The other model stresses on continuity, the flow of time, the plurality of
styles, themes, genres that emerge out of contacts and disagreements as well. Thus
two aspects of literary periodization become specific
a) It is a horizontal model based on diachronic study
b) A literary period is a structures interrelation in which constituents flow from
an earlier period, modify and evolve towards the future.
The dynamism of this structure relates to Claudio Guillens point of departure
in understanding the goal of comparative literature. He says the goal of
comparativism is to identify, order and study supranational and diachronic
structures. Structures because they present a plethora of alternatives, options, since
they evolve from the examination of more than one civilization or from an exploration
of divergent cultures. The responsibility thus rests on Comparative Literature to
constantly evolve models of alternative models of literary history that are not eurocentric.