WORLD LITERATURE AND COMPARATIVE POETICS: CULTURAL EQUALITY, RELATIVISM, OR INCOMMENSURABILITY?

In the 20th century the term “world literature” was expanded to include literatures outside of the Western world. This fact bears upon literary theory as well. Literary studies have tried to develop a universal approach to literature. Their presuppositions, however, are rooted in the modern Western notion of literature. The theoretical work, done in comparative poetics offers an important perspective on the problem of world literature. In the West, it was Earl Miner in particular who opened the debate on the commensurability of the world’s literary cultures. The paper points to the existence of literary critical discourses outside of the Western world and argues for the emergence of an intercultural theory of literature. In China, Japan, the Arab world and especially in India the production of literature has been accompanied by a rich critical output. In India, for example, an indigenous literary theory independent of Western scholarship is still alive. The so-called rasa theory, first formulated in Bharata’s Natya Shastra and later developed into rasadhvani by Anandavardhana and Abhinavagupta, seems, as Patrick Hogan and Keith Oatley argue, particularly interesting because it corresponds with the recent advancements in the study of cognition and emotion. The paper discusses possibilities and implications of the project of comparative poetics for understanding world literature.