李小清

比較文學研究方法論
簡瑛瑛教授
Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, by Ulrich Weisstein. (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1973)
Preface: Chapter 1 & 2 for the students of comparative literature, Chapter 2-7 for those of
literature, difficulty: terminological confusion
I. Definition
1. review
Carre: comparative lit. as a branch of lit. history ( emphasis on rapports de fait)
Baldensperger: excluding folklore from comparative literature
Van Tieghem: comparative literature studies the actions and influences exerted by
individuals (excluding the anonymous tradition of ancient and medieval literature)
Weisstein: those who concentrate on belle-lettres proper would include ancient and
medieval literature into comparative literature
2. Comparative literature in the direction of sociology should call for the study on imagination
3. national literature: units which form the basis of our discipline, defined by linguistic or
political-historical criteria
4. general literature: bears on the facts common to several literatures
5. world literature (Goethe): various nations should notice and understand each other…;the
uniqueness of national literatures would be preserved in the process of mutual exchange
and recognition….[B]y means of these worldwide contacts, a harmonization was to ensue
within the individual literatures
6. comparative literature (Remak): Com. Lit. is the study of literature beyond the confined of
one particular country, and the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand
and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the art,…philosophy, history, and the
social sciences, the sciences, religion, etc. on the other.
II. Influence and Imitation
1. emitter→intermediaries (transmitters)→receiver
2. direct influence/indirect influence
imitation/creative transmutation
conscious influence/unconscious influence
3. plagiarism: imitation on the sly or quotation without reference to the source
4. imitation:
a. character
b. stylistic: burlesque, parody, satire, caricature (negative influence, counter-design)
5. adaptation: creative treason (trahison creatrice), reworkings of a model to make a work
palatable to foreign audience, Ezra Pound to Chinese poetry
6. influence/effect( study of the appreciation or the fortune of a work by a foreign writer)
7.influence/reception (quote, allusion, analogy, parallel/affinities, source→false influence)
8. non-artistic influences: Darwin, Marx, Freud, etc.
9.literary convention/tradition: public property, collective influence
10. definition: influence should no longer be understood as “causality and similarity operating
in time.,” that is, as rapports de fait and parallels, but as a network of “multiple correlations
and multiple similarities functioning in a historical sequence, functioning… within that
framework of assumptions which each individual case will dictate.
III. Reception and Survival
1. borderline between influence & reception: influence should be used to denote the relations
existing between finished literary products, while “reception” serves to designate a wider
range of subjects, namely, the relations between these works and their ambience, including
authors, readers, reviewers, publishers and the surrounding milieu.
2. phenomena associated with reception
a. fortune (success) of a work
b. erudition: repertory, personal library
c. spiritual affinity (psychological reception): the kinship of the two writers as a
psychological and emotional one
d. personal myth or legend: a poet is read or esteemed only for a single work and
biographical facts are twisted or simplified to the point of distortion, Goethe/Whether
e. involuntary creative treason: originated from misunderstanding
f. recipient/intermediary
g. the image of foreign authors
h. literary survival: canon, resurrection of certain works
i. translation: re-translation in every new age when the work requires to be read anew,
authenticity/misunderstanding, trivialization, betrayal
j. image & national psychology
IV. Epoch, period, generation, movement
1. the idea of periods is equivalent to the concepts of philosophy and to the class in natural
study
2. epoch: the larger segment of the history of mankind, with religious overtone, epochs are
determined by an “event or time of an event marking the beginning of a relatively new
development.”
3. period: the shorter segment, a time section dominated by a system of norms, whose
introduction, spread and diversification, integration and disappearance can be traced.
4. The closer we come to our own time, the shorter are the time span we have to cover. After
1870, the periods are replaced by movements. The reduction in size, and the frequency of
change, are due to the fact that after Romanticism art has become self-conscious and artists
are forced to seek out something new.
5. annalistic approach: can identify simultaneous events rather than to order or periodize them
(decades, centuries)
6. generation: thirty years, the lowest temporal limit of a period
7. movement: represents a fresh group of youths, seldom lasts for an entire generation,
Surrealism, Dadaism
8. movement/school: a movement differs from a school in the sense that it is constituted by
coevals, so that no teacher-pupil relationship exists.
9. international literary movement: an example of Romanticism, starting at different years in
different nations, little unity among nations
10.conclusion: the history concepts are essential tools to strengthen Comparative Literature as
a scholarly disciple. However, it would be foolish to employ terms like era, age, movement
or period statically and mechanically instead of dynamically and flexibly.
V. Genre
1. Generic purity is characteristic of the classical or neoclassical frame of mind. A clear-cut
delimitation of genres is unattainable.
2. Van Tieghem: classical tragedy, romantic drama, the sonnet, rustic novel, pastoral poetry,
sentimental novel, restrict the survey to modern literature
3. Difficulties in tracking Greek & Roman genres: the existence of models is hypothetical; a
genre cultivated in antiquity vanished, but its name persists and serves for a modern genre
(contamination), ex. Satire/satyr play
4. the modern writer is not as much concerned with adhering to the conventions of a well-
defined genre. The notion of genre fades in light of the notion of technique
5. literature influenced by Oriental models such as Japanese haiku, Noh play. It is impossible
to transplant a genre which is firmly anchored in a specific historio-geographical context.
6.pure analogy studies in comparative genology are likely to benefit the Oriental and
Occidental literature
7.epic poetry, lyrical poetry, drama, didactic writings—didactic is a mode, not a kind or genre
8.how to define marginal forms—the essay, biography, autobiography
9.classification ( by means of imitation in Aristotle’s sense)
a. epic (language)/verse (combines meters)
b. novel/novella/the short story: number of words (length)
c. naïve/sentimental: psychological criteria
d. tragedy/poetry: intended effect (tragedy is to arouse pity and fear)
e. mythology/poetry: narrative of events; point of view
f. stream of consciousness/other fictional mode: technical or stylistic devices
g. elegy/satirical poetry: meter
h. bildungsroman/pastoral/political/courtly/utopian fiction: subject matter
10. conclusion: we should endeavor to draw lines of demarcation where conditions are
suitable and make sure that our terminology is consistent and humanly possible and
compatible with historical context.
VI. Thematology (please refer to the outline of the report made on 10/29)
VII.The Mutual Illumination of the Arts
1. Remak’s definition: the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand and
other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts…on the other.” (as long as literature is
the focal point)
2. Brown: all the fine arts are similar activities, despite their differing media and techniques,
and there are not only parallel between them induced by general spirit of differing eras, but
that there are frequently direct influences.
3. the study of arts in their mutual interpenetration: opera, emblematics, film
4. previous studies: Modern Language Association of America (MLA), in France, in Germany
5.Analogy between lit.& art
a. Wylie Sypher’s Four Stages of Renaissance Style：Pope’s mock-heroic epic The Rape of
the Lock and Watteau’s painting
b.When we use linguistic or national boundaries as criteria in the study of the interrelation
between the arts, we are exercising our prerogative without accounting for the qualitative
differences which prevail between the various media and techniques.
c.comparative aesthetics: analogies, terms: statics, dynamics, open & closed form, unity,
multiplicity, rhythm
d. to study literature and art in relation to the period or movement, one can and must
consider the artistic intentions as voiced in the theoretical manifestos. *Surrealism
e. the literary historian has to take art history and musicology into account because so much
is to be learned in stylish matters. Period terms are derived from the other arts
6.fusion of the arts
a. conglomerates: opera, film, ballet, cartoon, Greek tragedy, Shakespearean plays
b. double talent: Black, Thackeray, Rossetti, Michelangelo—pictorial & poetic, stylistic
laws
c. verbal expression in the direction of music or as the vehicle of images and symbols
d. the more complex the work is, the more difficult is the comparison
 music & lit.: Eliot’s Four Quartets, Hermann Hasse’s Der Steppenwolf, Keat’s
“Ode to a Grecian Urn”, Pound’s haiku-like poem “In the Station of the Metro”—
hybrid phenomenon
 plastic arts & lit.: Katherine Mansfield’s “Her First Ball”, Virginia Woolf’s To the
Lighthouse—Impressionism
7. artistic inspiration: melodic-rhythmic incitation & literary “influences”
8. image and mirage studies: national myths and legends are expressly dealt with, leitmotif
Appendix I History
Appendix II Bibliography

Question:
1. More rapports de fait, or more aesthetic? The innate dilemma of Comparative Literature.