Comparative Literature & Translation Studies - Unit 1
Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog for the thinking activity which is assigned by Dilip Barad sir for the comparative Literature & Translation Studies. Here, I will discuss the three essays by various writers. these are three essays : 1. 'Why comparative Indian Literature?(ed.Dev and Das, 1989) by Sisir Kumar Das. 2. 'Comparative Literature in India' by Amiya Dev. 3. 'Comparative Literature in India : An overview of its History'. by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta.
What is comparative literature?
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study of international relations but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as to understand cultures 'from the inside'". While most frequently practiced with works of different languages, comparative literature may also be performed on works of the same language if the works originate from different nations or cultures in which that language is spoken.
Let's have look for the very first article that is:
'Why Comparative Indian Literature?
Why Comparative Indian Literature ? from DivyaShetaWhy Comparative Indian Literature ? from DivyaSheta
Abstract:
comparative Literature is an interdisciplinary field, it studies literature across national borders, across time period, across language, across genes, across boundaries as we have seen in the definition in this article Das has inserted the 'Indian' in the title of the article. he has given the new way to look at the Comparative Indian Literature by his words. firstly he went to the India's multilingualism and multireligious culture.
Key arguments:
Comparative framework under the context of the relation between comparative literature and comparative Indian literature.
Can an area of enquiry clearly demarcated by linguistic and political boundaries serve the basic demands of comparative literature? Does not the area identified as Indian literature impose certain restrictions on the investigator and precondition him? Why should a scholar of literature prefer Indian literature to comparative literature, which promise a greater scope a wider perspective?
Further, He discuss the goal of comparative literature and 'Weltliterature'. To visualize the total literary activities of man as a single universe. A comparatist has to extend the area of investigation not only beyond one language and literature, but to as many as possible. The main dilemma of the comparatist , then, is to reconcile his idea of literature as a single universe of verbal expression with his ability to study it in its totality.
This is one of the reasons why every comparatist is so anxious to make a serious distinction between comparative literature and world literature.
Goethe in a conversation with Eckermann on 31 January 1827; 'the epoch of world-literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.
Goethe wanted the common reader to come out of the narrow confines of his language and geography and to enjoy the finest achievements of man.
Western comparatist has kept himself restricted to Western literature. The contact between the literatures of the West and the East began very early in history.
Eurocentrism against the Western comparatist is unfair and that his choice of European literatures as the main area of investigation has been prompted more by pragmatism than by prejudice against Oriental literatures.
One can argue that comparative, Western literature is the study of different national literatures, while comparative Indian literature is the study of literatures of one nation, according to some, so one national literature written in many languages.
Multilingualism is a fact of Indian society and of Indian literature. This multilingualism appears bewildering to the foreign students of India, and certainly occasions a grave concern in our politicians.
In a article, "Towards Comparative Indian Literature", Amiya Dev said, 'Comparison is right reason for us because, one, we are multilingual, and two, we are Third World.
Conclusion:
Our idea of comparative literature will emerge only when we take into account the historical situation in which we are placed. Our journey is not from comparative literature to comparative Indian literature, but from comparative Indian literature to comparative literature.
'Comparative Literature in India'
Abstract :
This article is by Amiya Dev. In this he discussing location of comparative literature with regard to aspects of diversity and unity in India. Speaking of Indian literature in the singular is problematic / in the plural is equally problematic. His article compares the diversity thesis, and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and difference as the prime site of comparative literature in India. The search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness. Dev underlines location and located inter-indian reception as an aspect of inter-literariness. Dev's proposal involves a particular view of the discipline of comparative literature because he argues that in the case of India the study of literature should involve the notion of interliterary process and a dialectical view of literary introduction.
This single-focus perspective is a result of both a colonial and a post-colonial perspective, the latter found in the motto of the Sahitya Akadami: "Indian literature is one though written in many languages" (Radhakrishnan). However, this perspective was opposed by scholars who argued that a country where so many languages coexist should be understood as a country with literature (in the plural). Presently, a different kind of resistance has emerged to the unity thesis in the form of what may be called "hegemonic apprehensions." In brief, arguments of unity in diversity are in Dev’s opinion suspect, for they encroach upon the individualities of the diverse literatures. In other words, a cultural relativist analogy is implied here, difference is underlined and corroborated by the fact that both writers and readers of particular and individual literatures are overwhelmingly concerned with their own literature and own literature only. It is from this perspective the Academy's motto "Indian literature is one though written in many languages," the retort is "Indian literature is one because it is written in many languages."
Dev mentions Gurbhagat Singh who has been discussing the notion of "differential multilogue". He rejects the notion of Indian literature because the notion as such includes and promotes a nationalist identity. As a relativist, Singh accords literatures not only linguistic but also cultural singularities. With regard to the history of comparative literature as a discipline, he rejects both the French and the American schools as well as the idea of Goethe's Weltliterature. His insistence on the plurality of logoi is particularly interesting because it takes us beyond the notion of dialogue, a notion that comparative literature is still confined to; enabling us to understand Indian diversity without sacrificing the individualities of the particulars.
Singh's notion of differential multilogue reflects a poststructuralist trend in Indian discourse: poststructuralism understands difference as a notion of inclusion, that is, mutuality. Thus, it cannot accept the single-focus category "Indian" without deconstructing its accompanying politics. If Indian literature had not been so heavily publicized and hammered down, as it were, into our national psyche, if our individual literatures had been left alone and not asked to pay their dues to "Indian literature," there would be no resistance to the notion of unity in diversity.
Ironically, Indian poststructuralism inflicts upon itself a sameness with difference- speakers elsewhere and does not seem to recognize that difference-speaking in India may be different from difference-speaking elsewhere.
Jaidav develops an argument for this cultural differential approach. Jaidev's notion of an Indian sensus communis is instances of "national" and racial image formations which suggest homogeneity and result in cultural stereotyping. The concept of an Indian sensus communis in the context of Singh's differential multilogue or Jaidev's differential approach brings me to the question of situs and theory. That is, the "site" or "location" of theory and of the theorist are important factors. If situs means cultural and linguistic rootedness then the notion of commonality is applicable.
Jaidev's concept of oneness provides an ambience for particular concerns with regard to cultural and artistic expression such as the case of language overlaps, the bi- and multilinguality of authors and their readership, openness to different genres, the sharing of themes based in similar social and historical experiences, emphasis on the oral and performing modes of cultural and artistic transmission, and the ease of inter-translatability. On the other hand, Jaidev suggests these characteristics of Indian cultural commonalities are rooted in a situs of the premodern age of Indian literatures.
Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures describes the construct of a "syndicated" Indian literature that suggests an aggregate and unsatisfactory categorization of Indian literature. Ahmad argues the notion of "European literature" is at best an umbrella designation and at worst a pedagogical imposition while Indian literature is classifiable and categorizable.
Further, he argues that while European and African literatures have some historical signifiers in addition to their geographical designation, these are recent concepts whereas Indian homogeneity has the weight of tradition behind it. In Ahmad's argumentation, the problem is that in the "Indian" archive of literature, Indianness ultimately proves limited when compared with the differential literature comprising each of the twenty-two literatures recognized by the Sahitya Akademi.An "Indian" archive of literature as represented by an "English" archive -- while non-hegemonic on the one hand by removal from a differential archive but hegemonizing by a latent colonial attitude on the other – also reflects the official language policy of the government: English, while not included in the Indian Constitution, is still recognized as a lingua franca of government, education, etc.
V.K. Gokak and Sujit Mukherjee who were speaking of an Indo-English corpus of literature that was created out of English translations of major texts from major Indian languages.
Ahmad's concern is with the hegemony of English, although he does not suggest its abolition in a way which would be close to Ngugi's arguments. It is true that the ideal of one language in India has been made real by now by ideological and political mechanisms. The official national language is Hindi and if literary texts from the other languages could be translated into Hindi, we could possibly arrive at a national Indian literature. However, in this case we would again arrive at a hegemonizing situation. On the other hand, it is clear that in the realm of education, English is the largest single language program in our colleges and universities.
Swapan Majumdar takes this systemic approach in his 1985 book, ‘Comparative Literature: Indian Dimensions, where Indian literature is neither a simple unity as hegemonists of the nation-state persuasion would like it to be, nor a simple diversity as relativists or poststructuralists would like it to be. He suggests that Indian literature is neither "one" nor "many" but rather a systemic whole where many subsystems interact towards one in a continuous and never-ending dialectic.
Same route of literary history, Sisir Kumar Das has taken with his planned ten-volume project, A History of Indian Literature, whose first volume, 1800-1910: Western Impact / Indian Response, appeared in 1991.
The underlying and most important finding is a pattern of commonality in nineteenth-century Indian literatures. Das's work on the literatures of the nineteenth century in India does not designate this Indian literature a category by itself. Rather, the work suggests a rationale for the proposed research, the objective being to establish whether a pattern can be found through the ages. One age's pattern may not be the same as another age's and this obviously preempts any given unity of Indian literature. Thus, Das's method and results to date show that Indian literature is neither a unity nor is it a total differential.
In many ways, Das's work is similar to K.M. George's two-volume Comparative Indian Literature of 1984-85. George's work was not as comprehensive as Das's: it only dealt with fifteen literatures and that too in a limited way. In Dev’s view George's work also demonstrates Western hegemony. For example Poetry was discussed in terms of "traditional" and "modern" but as if traditional was exclusively Indian and modern the result of a Western impact. Another problem of George's two volumes was that although they were titled Comparative Indian Literature, there was no comparison built into the findings and the fifteen individual literatures were placed simply side by side.
The Gujarati poet Umashankar Joshi -- a supporter of the unity approach -- was the first president of the Indian National Comparative Literature Association, and the Kannada writer U.R. Anantha Murthy is the current president of the Comparative Literature Association of India. Comparatists reflect the binary approach to the question of Indian literature as explained above. However, the Association also reflects a move toward a dialectic. The method of Comparative Literature allows for a view of Indian literature in the context of unity and diversity in a dialectical inter literary process and situation.
Dev suggests other aspects which support his understanding of Indian literature in an inter literary process: we are located in our own languages -- whether with an active or passive bilinguality -- where we have access to one or two other languages. Through inter-Indian translation we have also access to texts from a fourth and more languages. Now, as readers, consciously or subconsciously we place the texts in additional languages beside our original and first text. Inter-Indian reception presupposes that our situs is in our first text, that is, first language literature.
'Comparative Literature in India : An overview of its History'
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN INDIA: overview of its history by Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta from Jheel Barad
Abstract :
The essay gives an overview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in India, focusing primarily on the department at Jadavpur University, where it began, and to some extent the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies in the University of Delhi, where it later had a new be- ginning in its engagement with Indian literatures. The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore’s speech on World Literature and with a modern poet-translator as its founder. While British legacies in the study of literature were evident in the early years, there were also subtle efforts towards a decolonizing process and an overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Gradually Indian literature began to receive prominence along with literatures from the Southern part of the globe. Paradigms of approaches in comparative literary studies also shifted from influence and analogy studies to cross-cultural literary relations, to the focus on reception and transformation. In the last few years Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives, engaging with different ar- eas of culture and knowledge, particularly those related to marginalized spaces, along with the focus on recovering new areas of non-hierarchical literary relations.
The beginnings
Satyendranath Dutta in 1904 stated, “relationships of joy” The talk by Rabindranath Tagore entitled “Visvasahitya” (meaning “world literature”), given at the National Council of Education in 1907, served as a pre-text to the establishment of the department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University in 1956, the same year in which the university started functioning. The National Council of Education was the parent body of the University and the Council was established by a group of intellectuals in order to bring about a system of education that would be indigenous, catering to the needs of the people and therefore different from the British system of education prevalent at the time. Tagore (639) used the word “visvasahitya” (world literature) stated that the word was generally termed “comparative literature”. His idea of “visvasahitya” was complex, marked by a sense of a community of artists as workers building together an edifice, that of world literature.
Buddhadeva Bose, one of the prime architects of modern Bangla poetry, did not fully subscribe to the idealist visions of Tagore, for he believed it was necessary to break away from Tagore to be a part of the times, of modernity, but he too directly quoted from Rabindranath’s talk on “visvasahitya” while writing about the discipline, interpreting it more in the context of establishing connections, of ‘knowing’ literatures of the world.
Sudhindranath Dutta, also well-known for his translation of Mallarmé and his erudition both in the Indian and the Western context, to teach in the department of
Comparative Literature. Of the first five students in the department, three became well-known poets and the fourth a fine critic of Bengali poetry.
Despite certain impulses towards a decolonising process, the colonial framework was also evident in the pedagogic structure, in the large space given to English literature and the organization of the courses around the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Romantic and the Modern period. Of course, there were several other courses devoted to Sanskrit and Bengali literature. The epistemology of comparison emerged within this framework.
Comparisons between the Iliad and the Ramayana, and between Sanskrit and Greek drama taking both Aristotle’s Poetics and Bharata’s Natyasastra into consideration formed the core of a section of the syllabus. While similarities were highlighted, differences led to the comprehension of core areas of cultural components.
The project did not “bring into existence a new object/subject of knowledge” as such, but by laying out the terms of comparison it did start a chain of reflections that would constitute the materiality of comparison, an ongoing series of engagements with the multi-dimensional reality of questions related to the self and the other, to arrive at networks of relationships on various levels. The Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, which went on to become an important journal in literary studies in the country, came out in 1961.
Indian Literature as Comparative Literature
It was actually in the seventies that new perspectives related to pedagogy began to enter the field of Comparative Literature in Jadavpur. Comparative Literature studies in the country was around this nodal component of Indian literary themes and forms, a focal point of engagement of the Modern Indian Languages department established in 1962 in Delhi University. In 1974, the department of Modern Indian Languages started a post-MA course entitled “Comparative Indian Literature”. A national seminar on Comparative Literature was held in Delhi University organized by Nagendra, a writer-critic who taught in the Hindi department of Delhi University and a volume entitled Comparative Literature was published in 1977.
Aijaz Ahmad, to trace “the dialectic of unity and difference – through systematic periodization of multiple linguistic overlaps, and by grounding that dialectic in the history of material productions, ideological struggles, competing conceptions of class and community and gender, elite offensives and popular resistances, overlaps of cultural vocabularies and performative genres, and histories of orality and writing and print”.
The beginning of the process was seen in the comprehensive and integrative three-volume histories of Indian literature, where Indian literatures were studied not as discrete units but in dialogue with one another, brought out by Sisir Kumar Das, a faculty member at the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies, with support from other members of the department and the Sahitya Akademi.
T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of a scripto-centric, body-centric and phono-centric study of texts in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and interventions in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture. It must be mentioned that situated in Delhi, the department has students from different parts of India including a large section from the North-east of India, that allow multiple points of entry into Indian literary systems along with diverse inter-cultural relations that communities in different parts of India have with different communities outside the borders of the nation state.
Centres of Comparative Literature Studies
During the seventies and the eighties Comparative Literature was also practiced at a number of centres and departments in the South of India such as in Trivandrum, Madurai Kamaraj University, Bharati dasam University, Kottayam and Pondicherry.
Later in the eighties and the nineties other Centres were established in different parts of the country, either as independent bodies or within a single language department as in Punjabi University, Patiala, Dibrugarh University, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Sambalpur University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. In 1986 a new full-fledged department of Comparative Literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, where focus was on Indian literatures in Western India. Also in 1999 a department of Dravidian Comparative Literature and Philosophy was established in Dravidian University, Kuppam.
A core area of comparative literature studies and dissertations, particularly in the South, was taken up as a central area of research by the Visvanatha Kaviraja Institute of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics in Orissa. During this period two national associations of Comparative Literature came into being, one at Jadavpur called Indian Comparative Literature Association and the other in Delhi named Comparative Indian Literature Association. The two merged in 1992 and the Comparative Literature Association of India was formed, which today has more than a thousand members. In the early years of the Association, a large number of creative writers participated in its conferences along with academics and researchers, each enriching the horizon of vision of the other.
Reconfiguration of areas of comparison
The eighties again saw changes and reconfigurations of areas of comparison at Jadavpur University. In the last years of the seventies, along with Indian literatures, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude became a part of the syllabus with a few other texts from Latin American Literatures and then Literatures from African countries were included.
Later during the nineties, Area Studies papers on African, Latin American, Canadian literatures and literature of Bangladesh were introduced. From the beginning of the discipline in India, cross-cultural relations between Indian literatures and European and American literatures had been in focus. Reception studies also pointed to historical realities determining conditions of acceptability and hence to complex configurations between literature and history. To give an instance, it seemed that romanticism of a particular kind had an easy access into the realm of Bengali literature, but it was a romanticism that did not accept many of the European elements. Burns and Wordsworth were very popular and it was felt that their romanticism was marked by an inner strength and serenity. The much talked about
‘angst’ of the romantic poet was viewed negatively. The love for serenity and ‘health’ went back to the classical period and seemed an important value in the tradition. Again while Shelley and Byron were often critiqued, the former for having introduced softness and sentimentality to Bengali poetry, they were also often praised for upholding human rights and liberty in contrast to the imperialist poetry of Kipling.
Shelley, the poet of revolt, began to have a very positive reception when the independence movement gathered momentum.
Sisir Kumar Das, that there were different Shakespeare's. Shakespeare’s texts might have been imposed in the classroom, but the playwright had a rich and varied reception in the world of theatre. Parsi theatre was rejuvenated by the enactment of the comedies of Shakespeare, political theatre groups appropriated his plays, while critics in different periods interpreted Shakespeare in accordance with the needs of the time. From reception studies the focus gradually turned to cross-cultural reception where reciprocity and exchange among cultures were studied.
Reception studies both along vertical and horizontal lines formed the next major area of focus – one studied for instance, elements of ancient and medieval literature in modern texts and also inter and interliterary relations foregrounding impact and responses. While one studied Vedic, Upanishadic, Buddhist and Jaina elements in modern texts, one also looked at clusters of sermons by Buddha, Mahavira and Nanak, at qissas and katha ballads across the country, the early novels in different Indian literatures, and then the impact of Eastern literature and thought on Western literature and vice versa. Two groups of papers were offered, one with components from Indian literature at the centre and the other with Western literature.
Research directions
The department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Saurashtra University, Rajkot, took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the nineteenth century.
The Department of Assamese in Dibrugarh University received the grant and published a number of books related to translations, collections of rare texts and documentation of folk forms.
The department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University also received assistance to pursue research in four major areas, East-West Literary Relations, Indian Literature, Translation Studies and Third World literature. Incidentally, the department had in Manabendra Bandyopadhyay, an avid translator who translated texts from many so-called “third-world countries”.
The department at Jadavpur University was upgraded under the programme to the status of Centre of Advanced Studies in 2005, and research in Comparative Literature took a completely new turn.
A large focus, therefore, in this area was on oral texts and research on methods of engaging with such texts. The project led to documentation and compilation of notes related to experiences of such studies and the collaboration with grassroots artists from rural areas.
A particularly important question for Comparative Literature in this area could be linked with questions of Dalit literature’s relationship with mainstream writing, subverting, questioning and at the same time also inflecting other discourses while continuing to maintain its unique identity based to a large degree on performativity to draw the reader in as an ethical witness to the extreme limits of human suffering on which it is poised.
The second area in the Centre for Advanced Studies was the interface between literatures of India and its neighbouring countries.
Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies
Almost all departments or centres of Comparative Literature today have courses on Translation or Translation Studies. Both are seen as integral to the study of Comparative Literature. Translation Studies cover different areas of interliterary studies. Histories of translation may be used to map literary relations while analysis of acts of translation leads to the understanding of important characteristics of both the source and the target literary and cultural systems.
As for Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature had always engaged with different aspects of Cultural Studies, the most prominent being literature and its relation with the different arts.
The M Phil course on the subject at Jadavpur University highlights changing marginalities, ‘subcultures’ and movements in relation to contemporary nationalisms and globalization, and also sexualities, gender and the politics of identity.
In some of the new centres of Comparative Literature that came up in the new universities established in the last Five Year Plan, diaspora studies were taken up as an important area of engagement. It must be mentioned though that despite tendencies towards greater interdisciplinary approaches, literature continues to occupy the central space in Comparative Literature and it is believed that intermedial studies may be integrated into the literary space.
Non-hierarchical connectivity:
As in the case of humanities and literary studies, the discipline too is engaged with issues that would lead to the enhancement of civilizational gestures, against forces that are divisive and that constantly reduce the potentials of human beings.
Kumkum Sangari in a recent article called “co-construction”, a process anchored in “subtle and complex histories of translation, circulation and extraction” And comparatists work with the knowledge that a lot remains to be done and that the task of the construction of literary histories, in terms of literary relations among neighbouring regions, and of larger wholes, one of the primary tasks of Comparative Literature today has perhaps yet to begin. In all its endeavours, however, the primary aim of some of the early architects of the discipline to nurture and foster creativity continues as a subterranean force.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, this article is giving us the idea of the history of comparative literature in india and how it was the journey which started from the Jadavpur university to the till date. Many scholars have given their insights in this field and very remarkable way it is given.
Thank you!
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