How does the study of comparative literature affect our understanding of world literature?

The idea of “world literature” or “Weltliterater Welt” in German means the world” and “literatur” is “literature”) emerged in Germany. William Jones, an official of the East India Company in Calcutta, translated Kalidasa into English.

German Romantic poet Goethe was also impressed after reading the translation of Kalidasa’s Abhijanashakuntalam.

Philosopher Schlegel also came under the spell of Sanskrit literature. Goethe and Schlegel noted that something unites literary works from other languages and from other parts of the world and that there could be and there should be an ideal world literature.

In Europe, each nation believed that its cultural pinnacle is represented by its literature.

Each country felt that its over national literature is unique and superior in some way or the other to other national literatures, either in terms of its own antiquity or in terms of its own literary geniuses.

The French could not bring themselves to accept that an English writer could be superior to the French literary heritage.

The Germans preferred to praise Shakespeare as a genius instead of acknowledging French literature as the epitome of perfection.

There are different strands in this idea of “World Literature”. First is the Romantic Movement and its impact on writers and culture historians.

Second is the accidental discovery of Sanskrit literature by some of the Englishmen working in India.

Third is the German writers were impressed by Sanskrit literature, especially Kalidasa. The fourth element is the national rivalry. All these elements give rise to the idea and theory of “World Literature”.

Theories of Comparative Literature

Europeans felt that they needed to study other national literatures in Europe to make better sense of their own literature.

The notion of national literature arises from the political development of the emergence of the nation-state in Europe from the 15th and 16th centuries onwards in Europe.

This also coincided and was sometimes preceded by the cultural development when Europeans in different parts identified themselves as English, French, German and Italian and used their own languages for creative and other purposes, replacing the cosmopolitan Latin which prevailed across Europe in scholarly circles.

The Roman Catholic Church also used Latin as the language of the Bible and of the church services. When Martin Luther led the Protestant revolt against the Roman Catholic Church, he revolted against Latin.

Luther translated the Bible into German to make it accessible to common people. So, nation, language literature and culture become identified with each other and this was the root of the comparative literature in Europe.

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