UNIVERSITE DE YAOUNDE I THE UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE I

FACULTE DES ARTS, LETTRES ET FACULTY OF ARTS, LETTERS AND

DEPARTMENT: BILINGUAL STUDIES/ETUDES BILINGUES

Course objectives: The course will examine the history of Comparative literature
from its origins to the contemporary period. It will introduce the comparative approach to
literature and civilizations, and teach literature within an intra-disciplinary and multi-
disciplinary context. It will analyze the relations between and among writers, works, languages,
cultures, nations, continents, and histories. It will also study literature across national boundaries:
literary movements, genres and themes as well as the works of the major theorists.
Course outline
Week1: Definition of comparative literature
Week 2: Origins and Development of Comparative literature
Week 3: The French School, the German School, the American School and current trends
Week 4: Johann Gottfried Herder, Results of a Comparison of Different People‟s Poetry in
Ancient and Modern Times
Week 5: Germaine de Staël, Of the General Spirit of Modern Literature
Week 6: J.W. von Goethe and J.P. Eckermann, Conversations on World Literature
Week 7: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Crossing Borders
Week 8: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Crossing Borders
Week 9: Mariama Bâ, Une si longue lettre pp.11-89
Week 10 : Mariama Bâ, Une si longue lettre pp. 90-164
Week 11 : Alice Walker, The Color Purple pp. 1-146
Week 12, Alice Walker, The Color Purple pp.147-294
Week 13: Mariama Bâ‟s and Alice Walker‟s Walker‟s Biographical Backgrounds: Similarities
and Differences
Week 14: A comparative study of Une si longue lettre and The Color Purple

Bibliography
Bâ, Mariama. Une si longue lettre. Dakar: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Sénégal,
1979.
Damrosch, David, Natalie Melas and Mbongiseni Buthelezi. The Princeton Sourcebook in
Comparative Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Djockoua, Manyaka Toko. Culture, History, and Comparative Literature: John Steinbeck and
René Philombe. Göttingen: Cuvillier Verlag, 2009.
Jay, Paul. “State of the Discipline: Comparative Literature and Transdisciplinarity.” Neither
Here Nor There: The (Non-) Geographical Futures of Comparative Literature. Inquire
Journal of Comparative Literature. Issue 3.2: February 2014.
Marcus, Sharon. “Same Difference? Transnationalism, Comparative Literature, and Victorian
Studies.” Victorian Studies (Summer 2003): 677-686.
Remak, H.H. “Comparative Literature: Its Definition and Function.” Comparative Literature:
 Method and Perspective. 1961. Ed. Newton P. Stallknecht and HorstFrenz.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971. 3-57.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Death of a Discipline. Columbia: Columbia University Press,
2003
Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application.
Amsterdam-Atlanta, Ga: Rodopi, 1998.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Pocket Books, 1982
Internet sources are available.

WEEKS 1& 2
1) Definition of Comparative Literature
The definition and methodology of comparative literature have given rise to an array of
writings. Many attempts have been made by theorists to define this field of study since its
emergence in the nineteenth century. In Theory of Literature (1949), René Wellek argues that
comparative literature studies all literature from an international perspective, with a
consciousness of the unity of all literary creation and experience (38-45). This implies that
comparative literature transcends linguistic and national boundaries. In 1961, H.H. Remak
defined comparative literature as “ the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular
country, and the study of the relationships between literature on the one hand and the other
areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts, philosophy, history, the social sciences,
religion etc., on the other hand”(Comparative Literature: Method and Perspectives 3).
Adopting Remak‟s definition in On the Road to Guinea: Essays in Black Comparative
Literature (1992), Edward O. Ako observes that “comparative literature is the study of
literature beyond the confines of one particular country and of the relationships between
literature and the other arts, social sciences and sciences.” This definition, Ako points out,
“falls within the so-called American „school‟ of comparative literature. The French school
does not consider the study of literature and the other arts as part of the discipline” (6). Like
Wellek, Remak and Ako focus on the international perspective of comparative literature.
At the 14th Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association held in
Edmonton, Canada, in August 1994, most participants stressed the increasing weight of
“cultural studies” in this discipline. In Comparative Literature: Theory, Method, Application
(1998), Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek notes that:
First, Comparative Literature means the knowledge of more than one national
language, and/or it means the knowledge and application of other disciplines in
and for the study of literature and second, Comparative Literature has an ideology
of inclusion of the Other, be that a marginal literature in its several meanings of
marginality, a genre, various text types, etc. Historically, it is true that
Comparative Literature demonstrated a focus on European literatures and later on
European and American literature, and thus the current criticism of the discipline‟s
Eurocentrism makes sense to a point […] At the same time, however, the
discipline paid more attention to „Other‟ literatures than any of the national
literatures. Comparative Literature has intrinsically a content and form which
facilitate the cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary study of literature and it has a
history that substantiated this content and form.
(www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/pub/totosy98/l.html)
Tötösy‟s definition recapitulates some of the points earlier mentioned as it centers on the
discipline‟s international, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary dimensions. These aspects are
incorporated in the manifesto—the ten principles of comparative literature—that Zepetnek
points out in the first chapter of his book:
- the crucial importance of method;
- the dialogue between cultures, languages, literatures, and other disciplines;
- the necessity for the comparatist to acquire in-depth grounding in several languages
and literatures as well as other disciplines;
- the study of literature in relation to other forms of artistic expression (the visual
arts, music, film, etc.) and in relation to other disciplines in the humanities and
social sciences (history, sociology, psychology, etc.)
- the parallel recognition and study of single languages and literatures in the context
of the comparative conceptual approach and function with a special focus on
English;
- the focus on literature within the context of culture;
- the theoretical, methodological as well as ideological and political approach of
inclusion;
- insistence on methodology in interdisciplinary study, with three main types of
methodological precision: intra-disciplinarity (analysis and research within the
disciplines in the humanities), multi-disciplinarity (analysis and research by one
scholar employing any other discipline), and pluri-disciplinarity (analysis and
research by team-work with participants from several disciplines);
- the content of comparative literature against the contemporary paradox of
globalization versus localization, which means promoting comparative literature as
a global and inclusive discipline of international humanities with focus on
literature;
- the vocational commitment of the practitioners of comparative literature (ibid).
All these views that cast light on the content and methodology of the discipline have impacted
on the definition proposed by the Association of Comparative Literature of America (ACLA).
ACLA posits that comparative literature has as fundamentals the analysis of relations between
and among writers, works, languages, traditions, cultures, nations, continents, and histories,
and the exploration of the methods and mechanisms by which those relations create meaning
(www.acla.org).
The ACLA definition shows the contribution of postcolonial studies to comparative
literature. As Sharon Marcus observes,
Postcolonial studies have also productively troubled the unified and
idealized generic categories that were the basis of traditional comparative
literature. More importantly, postcolonial studies have exploded the
category of the nation on which comparative literature implicitly depends: to
be a comparatist is to study more than one national literature. (Victorian
Studies 681)
Espousing Marcus‟s view in Death of a Discipline (2003), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak argues
that comparatists should transcend the nation-based approach and adopt a cross-cultural
approach that goes beyond national boundaries. Both Marcus and Spivak underline the great
impact of postcolonial and cultural studies on comparative literature. Quoting Patrick
Brantlinger in A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, Wilfred L. Guerin et al. posit
that “cultural studies” is not „a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda,‟ but „a
loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions.‟” This movement flowered in the
1960s, embracing a wide range of fields such as
Marxism, new historicism, feminism, gender studies, anthropology, studies
of race and ethnicity, film theory, sociology, urban studies, public policy
studies, popular culture studies, and postcolonial studies: those fields that
 focus on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause
division and alienation. (240)
“Cultural Studies” questions inequalities within social power structures; it thus makes no
distinction between “high” and “low” cultures. This school of thought fosters the analysis of
all forms of production in relation to other cultural practices.
2) Origins and Development
The history of comparative literature is a history of perpetual change and transformation
because of the diversity and complexity of the literatures that it studies and the critical
theories that it draws from. According to Jan M. Ziolkowski, a Harvard comparatist, the term
comparative first appeared as a French expression, littérature comparée in 1816. It was later
adopted by other Romance language scholars. Its first usage in English was by Matthew
Arnold, who used the plural form in 1848. By the 1890s, the comparative study of literature
became institutionalized in many European and American universities and was to play a key
role in literary studies. French, German and Italian writers and philosophers are credited with
setting the origins of comparative literature. Johann Gottfried Herder, the German
philosopher, poet and literary critic focused on national language and culture and their impact
on national literatures and comparative literature, as seen in the extract “Results of a
Comparison of Different Peoples‟ Poetry in Ancient and Modern Times” from Herder‟s
Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität (Letters for the Advancement of Humanity 1797).
Germaine de Staël, although she backed national culture and patriotism, favored the study of
other cultures and introduced German Romanticism to France. The extract “Of the general
Spirit of Modern Literature” is the ninth chapter of her book De la Littérature, considerée
dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales (On literature, considered in its relations to
social institutions, 1800). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a scientist, writer and critic, brought
the concept of world literature (Weltliteratur), which showed his interest in the international
circulation of literature. The extract “Conversations on World Literature” (1827) is from
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann (1850).

By 1907, the first history of comparative literary studies, Frederico Lolice‟s A Short History
of Comparative Literature from the Earliest Times to the Present Day had already been
written. From its beginning, comparative literature faced the problem of its definition and that
of its Eurocentrism. The phrase “comparative literature” that refers to a kind of literature was
a problem because there is no literature that is in itself comparative. Comparative literature
was, from its beginning, about the comparative study of literature, or literatures. One of the
problems with comparative literature‟s Eurocentric orientation was its tendency to trace and
periodize literary history through the framework of European history. Postcolonial critics like
Ania Loomba, Dipesh Chakrabarry and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will criticize this
Eurocentric orientation. They called for a comparatist practice that includes the work of
multicultural, postcolonial, and globalization theory.

Jan M. Ziolkowski, Peter Hulme , Ania Loomba and other critics want to move comparative
literature beyond comparatism by paying attention to complex, networked, and fluid forms of
mobility and exchange. Their orientation is reflected in the 2006 ACLA report entitled
Compararative Literature in the Age of Globalization ( edited by Haun Saussy).