From comparative literature today toward comparative cultural studies

Abstract

Historically, the comparative perspective and method has proven itself indispensable in many disciplines and established itself, accordingly, intellectually as well as institutionally. For example, in a review of the George M. Fredrickson's The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (1997), the reviewer argues that the comparative perspective "give[s] us a good opportunity for assessing how comparative history can contribute to modern knowledge... in The Comparative Imagination, Fredrickson welcomes the increasing tendency of historians of the United States to write from a "comparative perspective... by using foreign examples to explain what is distinctive about American society" (Thompson 48; incidentally, Fredrickson explains that before his turn to history, he pursued the study of comparative literature [Fredrickson 8]). In the humanities, it has been established sufficiently and often enough that the discipline of comparative literature has intrinsically a content and form that facilitate the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of literature and culture. As well, it is generally accepted in scholarship that the discipline has a history that substantiated its intrinsic aims and objectives in content and in practice. Predicated on the borrowing of methods from other disciplines and on the application of the appropriated method to areas of study single-language literary study more often than not tends to neglect, the discipline is difficult to define however, because it is fragmented and pluralistic, non-self-referential and inclusive. Copyright 2003 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.