Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Literature and Language

Literature and Language Steven P. Son Dru P Early in their careers, most comparatists no doubt have faced the challenging task of explaining to curious interlocutors what comparative literature as a discipline is. Part of the challenge of explaining the discipline is that over the decades since its institutionalization in American academe it was been relatively e fl xible in ex- panding and recong fi uring itself to accommodate new areas and techniques for teaching and research. i Th s e fl xibility and elasticity notwithstanding, one of the enduring characteristics that has served as something of a hallmark and a distin- guishing feature over and against national language and cultural studies depart- ments is the comparative juxtaposition of literary works from die ff ring cultural and linguistic backgrounds—ideally in their original language—with the anticipa- tion that this contrastive reading strategy will reveal important aspects of the texts under consideration more forcefully and clearly than their study in the context of their culture of origin alone. Although universal admiration for both the breadth and depth of the erudition of some of the earliest practitioners of the discipline re- mains undiminished—for Spitzer, Auerbach, and Curtius—during the early phases of its institutional life, comparative http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Comparatist University of North Carolina Press

Literature and Language

The Comparatist , Volume 34 – Jun 24, 2010

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-north-carolina-press/literature-and-language-CeAHum0re2

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 the Southern Comparative Literature Association.
ISSN
1559-0887

Abstract

Steven P. Son Dru P Early in their careers, most comparatists no doubt have faced the challenging task of explaining to curious interlocutors what comparative literature as a discipline is. Part of the challenge of explaining the discipline is that over the decades since its institutionalization in American academe it was been relatively e fl xible in ex- panding and recong fi uring itself to accommodate new areas and techniques for teaching and research. i Th s e fl xibility and elasticity notwithstanding, one of the enduring characteristics that has served as something of a hallmark and a distin- guishing feature over and against national language and cultural studies depart- ments is the comparative juxtaposition of literary works from die ff ring cultural and linguistic backgrounds—ideally in their original language—with the anticipa- tion that this contrastive reading strategy will reveal important aspects of the texts under consideration more forcefully and clearly than their study in the context of their culture of origin alone. Although universal admiration for both the breadth and depth of the erudition of some of the earliest practitioners of the discipline re- mains undiminished—for Spitzer, Auerbach, and Curtius—during the early phases of its institutional life, comparative

Journal

The ComparatistUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Jun 24, 2010

There are no references for this article.