Comparative Literature: Its Emergence, Challenges and Suggested Developments

Abstract

"Comparisons to be educative need to happen in a site that belongs to no one. (Radhakrishna, 471). Today comparative literature has expanded its horizons and literary theorists question the very foundation of the word 'compare'. Gayatri Spivak in her essay, Rethinking Comparitivism says that from the very beginning comparative literature did not exactly compare (Spivak, Rethinking 611). A similar view is propounded by R. Radhakrishnan in his essay, Why Compare? where he puts forward his argument that comparisons are unproductive as neither of us learns from the other. He believes that there must be a want to learn from the “others'” experience that is not one's own, instead of persuading the other into believing that one's own “lifeworld” is superior to him (Radhakrishna 454). This paper discusses how these theorists by questioning ethnocentricity, advocating the study of subaltern languages and promoting translation studies aim to foster comparative literature as a dynamic discipline which promotes an objective and ethical thinking amongst the people. It does so by tracing the earliest theoretical concepts and history of Comparative Literature, the challenges it faces and developments advocated by literary critics in the field of comparative literature.