Comparative literature

“ A bibliography of studies (from 1800 through autumn 1982) on the history, theory, and teaching of comparative literature. The entries are placed by publication date in one of two divisions: 1800–99 and 1900–82. In the first division, entries are organized alphabetically by author in three sections: general works on the theory of comparative literature; bibliographies and studies of special topics, terminology, and the relationship to other disciplines; and works on the history of comparative literature. ”

“ National literature has been developed from within as well as influenced from without; and the comparative study of this internal development is of far greater interest than that of the external, because the former is less a matter of imitation and more an evolution directly dependent on social and physical causes. ”

“ Trace the influence of the Christian pulpit, or that of judicial institutions, or that of the popular assembly, on the growth of prose in different European countries, and you soon find how similarly internal social evolution has reflected itself in the word and thought of literature; how essential it is that any accurate study of literature should pass from language into the causes which allowed language and thought to reach conditions capable of supporting a literature; and how profoundly this study must be one of comparison and contrast. ”

“ Perhaps the essential features of imagination are two—the building up of generalisations and abstractions out of individual facts, and the transition from the individual self to the collective conception of humanity on a more or less extensive scale. Similarly, perhaps, the essential features of reason may be stated as the analysis of generalisations and abstractions into individual facts, and the transition from the social or collective conceptions of action and thought to the individual. ”

“ For us who deal, not with the various forms of animal life, but with the various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity of the working of the human mind in all races of men. ”

“ I dwell on this before passing on to the poem, because I want to bring before you the remembrance of what a tremendous factor in literature, as in thought and in the whole of life is the principle of comparison, or, as we might put it, the principle of similitude or likeness. We learn about a thing we do not know through its likeness, as a whole or in some parts, to a thing we do know. ”

“ On the contrary, the higher, over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, — politics, industry, science, literature, art — imply a differentiation among men that in spite of its significance would defy classification. ”

“ In actuality there is, from the very beginning onward, nothing but just these individually limited and definite qualities, from which only we, by our comparative thinking, subsequently form the abstraction of a universal, unmoulded ‘Quality.’ And it is precisely the aforesaid limited qualities that are the things themselves. ”

“ That particular is the different proportions in which they may have divided their energies between the production of men of thought on the one hand, or men of action on the other. For, there may be a difference in the comparative adaptation of their respective methods and institutions, and of their interior and essential genius, to the one or the other purpose. ”

“ We may compare, therefore, the culture of one people with the folk-lore of another, because both are upon the same level of development; or we may pare the different elements of folk-lore or of culture together.
Thus there are two elements in the comparative study of custom and belief—namely, the comparison of like elements in two distinct areas, and the comparison of unlike elements in the same area. ”

“ If, indeed, the tendency of these remarks is justifiable, then unavoidably the subjective element, which is beauty, must coalesce with the objective, which is truth; and sociology must be neither art simply, nor science in the narrow meaning of the word at all, but knowledge rendered imaginatively, and with an element of personality; that is to say, in the highest sense of the term, literature. ”

“ The connections of historical facts with all the sciences, afford another useful theme; that may vastly increase our comparative knowledge: much of it has arisen, besides observation, from accurate comparison, analysis and generalization, which combine to give results, enlarging the field and sphere of human knowledge, in all its branches. ”

“ An able writer in the Saturday Review truly describes the science of comparative philology as "the great discovery of modern scholarship, the discovery which more than any other unites distant ages and countries in one tie of brotherhood." ”

“ To define an order of facts and a form of literature in the same terms—to suppose that when either of them is defined the other is defined—is so absurd that one would probably not believe it could be seriously done were it not so often done. ”

“ To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. ”

“ In any piece of exposition there must be unity, and this principle will dispense with everything that is not essential to the theme; there must be judicious massing, that those parts of the essay deserving emphasis may receive it; and there must be a coherence between the parts, large and small, so close and intimate that the progress from one topic to another shall be steady and without hindrance. Unity, Mass, and Coherence should be the main considerations in composition the aim of which is to explain a term or a proposition. ”

“ TRUTH IN ART The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart. ”

“ I say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open always to something more right and more related. ”

“ The cross lights that different studies throw upon one another through careful correlation—as when literature and history deal with the same topic—are valuable in a similar manner and should be included in the questions that are considered. ”

“ So far as the classification of our present subject-matter is concerned we may observe, first, that in this act of comparative differentiation, which presupposes the significance independently, and affirms either a sensuous or imaginary form in a relation of opposition to it, there is the aspect held constantly throughout that the significance is here accepted as of most importance, and the form is solely the embodiment of the same and external to it ”

“ It is not the teaching of idealism alone but of the facts which logical analysis has brought home to us that all difference in the last resort finds its ground in the quality or content of the things differentiated, and that this difference of content shows in turn a double strand, the strand of sameness and the strand of otherness—that in which and that by which they differ from one another. ”

“ It often has been said as an objection against the comparative tale-researches that the material on which it is founded is too uncertain and frail to draw any conclusions from, and to a certain point these objections are justified. The fact is that every single version of a tale is the result of an individual development. ”

“ All thought begins with conceptions to a certain extent generalised, and thence is developed in two directions. On the one hand, generalisations become wider and wider, binding together by common properties a larger and larger number of phenomena, and so embracing a wider field of the world of facts. ”

“ An attempt has been made to bring together literature that would exhibit the range, the divergence, the distinctive character of the writings and points of view upon a single topic. The results are naturally subject to criticism and revision. ”

“ Our general ideas, from those immediately bordering on the concrete to those which attain pure symbolism, constitute a hierarchy of ever-increasing simplicity. What value must be assigned to this thinking by concepts, in proportion as it ascends higher in the scale? We are all familiar with the debates upon this question, bearing, as it does, fundamentally upon the objective value of abstraction and generalisation. ”

“ The second principle I shall take notice of is that of comparison, or the variation of our judgments concerning objects, according to the proportion they bear to those with which we compare them. We judge more of objects by comparison than by their intrinsic worth and value; and regard every thing as mean, when set in opposition to what is superior of the same kind. ”

“ Now, if we will annex a meaning to our words, and speak only of what we can conceive, I believe we shall acknowledge that an idea which, considered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort. ”

“ Each category, or determination, is a general principle by which we seek to make experience a consistent whole and render it a concrete universal; and each has its own way of relating the two root factors, viz., unity and difference. ”

“ LESSON 128. CONSTRUCTION OF COMPARATIVES AND SUPERLATIVES. +Caution+.—In stating a comparison avoid comparing a thing with itself. [Footnote: A thing may, of course, be compared with itself as existing under different conditions; as, The star is brighter to-night; The grass is greener to-day.]
+Remark+.—The comparative degree refers to two things (or sets of things) as distinct from each other, and implies that one has more of the quality than the other. The comparative degree is generally followed by than. ”

“ Why were the powers of Abstraction and Generalization passed over in silence?—powers which, according as they are cultivated or neglected, constitute the most essential of all distinctions between the intellectual characters of individuals. ”

“ Generalization, on the other hand, consists in an ideal compounding of abstractions, “when, comparing a number of objects, we seize on their resemblances; when we concentrate our attention on these points of similarity.... ”

“ The concrete is understood by anybody who knows enough to recognize it. The generality can be discovered only by him who has a similar imagination, and hence each one draws a different generalization from the same work of art. ”

“ These two aims, the one abstract and universal, the other concrete and individual, can always be combined, just as in every human countenance are combined a type, which is universal, and a character, which is individual. ”

“ And when the generalisation is put to a test, by applying it to hundreds of separate facts which seemed to be hopelessly contradictory the moment before, each of them assumes its due position, increasing the impressiveness of the picture, accentuating some characteristic outline, or adding an unsuspected detail full of meaning. The generalisation gains in strength and extent ”

“ But there remain a large number of the recognised problems of philosophy in regard to which the method advocated gives all those advantages of division into distinct questions, of tentative, partial, and progressive advance, and of appeal to principles with which, independently of temperament, all competent students must agree. ”

“ Since nothing can be concluded from a comparison of ‘This is good’ with, let us say, ‘This is sought by an impulse belonging to a dominant group’, let us see whether light can be gained by considering analogous instances in which special distinct ideas have for a time been thought indispensable only to yield later to analysis and substitution. ”

“ To understand, we have analyzed the intellectual world into two classes, good and evil; and to discover the members of each class, we fix their qualities, not by the hypothetick, but the practical mode of reasoning. ”

“ Whether these principles of classification are correct or not is a matter of less consequence than the arrangement of the facts, by which every person is enabled to form his own idea of the manner in which progress has been evolved in early times. ”

“ They create, namely, an ascending progress from the individual to the more general notions, by a methodical process of filiation; they operate upon living beings, or objects of the same nature, having consequently a common standard. The history, even in brief, of these classifications is instructive: it shows the progressive passage of concrete-abstract ideas to more and more abstract concepts, from a statement of gross resemblances to the quest after subtle similarities, from the period of assimilation to that in which dissociation predominates. ”

“ It is evident, to begin with, that a scientific comparison of facts must be directed towards two aims—towards establishing and explaining similarity, and towards enumerating and explaining differences. ”

“ Why not rather with a few, a very few striking and typical forms, around which subsequent knowledge can group itself? The comparison of a multitude of objects in order to abstract their common characters, and thus obtain the generic or class conception, is suited to the scientific but not to the pre-scientific stage of progress. ”