Hello everyone I am Nehalba Gohil a student of the department of English MKBU . In this blog Im going to discuss about the article of comparative studies.
Susan Bassnett what is Comparative literature Today ? Comparative literature : A critical introduction 1993
Abstract :-
Sooner or later, anyone who claims to be working in comparative literature has to try and answer the inevitable question: What is it? The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literatures across both time and space. Susan Bassnett gives a critical understanding of Comparative literature. She says that there is no particular object for studying comparative literature. Another thing is, we cannot give a definite term for comparative literature. Different authors of literature give various perspectives about comparative literature.
Key Arguments :
Critics at the end of the twentieth century,in the age of postmodernism,still wrestle with the same questions that were posed more than a century ago: “What is the object of the study in comparative literature? How can comparison be the objective of anything? If individual literatures have canon,what might a comparative canon be? How can be comparatist select what to compare ?Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study ?” Susan Bassnett argues that there are different terms used by different scholars for comparative literature studies. Therefore, we cannot put in a single compartment for comparative literature. The second thing she argues is that the west students of 1960 claimed that comparative literature could be put in single boundaries for comparative literature study, but she says that there is no particular method used for claiming.
What is the object of the study in comparative literature?
How can comparison be the objective of anything?
If individual literature have cannon what might a comparative cannon be ?
How can be Comparative select what to compare ?
Is comparative literature a discipline ? Or is it simply a field of study ?
Conclusion :-
Comparative Literature has traditionally claimed translation as a subcategory,but this assumption in now being questioned.The work of scholars such as Toury,Lefevere,Hermans,Lembert and many others has shown that translation is especially at moments of great cultural changes. Evan Zohar argued that extensive translation activity takes place when a culture is in a period of translation :when it is expanding,when it needs renewal,when it isin a pre-revolutionary phase,then translation plays a vital part. Comparative Literature have always claimed that translation as a subcategory,but as translation studies establishes itself firmly as a subject based in inter-cultural study and offering a methodology of some rigour, both in terms of theoretical and descriptive work, so comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else. Seenin this way, the problem of the crisis could then be put into perspective,and the long,unresolved debate on whether comparative literature is or is not a discipline i its own right could finally and definitely be shelved.
Comparative literature in the Age of Digital Humanities : On Possible Futures for a Discipline
Todd Presner
Abstract : -
After five hundred years of print and the massive transformations in society and culture that it unleashed, we are in the midst of another watershed moment in human history that is on par with the invention of the printing press or perhaps the discovery of the New World. This article focuses on the questions like it is essential that humanists assert and insert themselves into the twenty - first century cultural wars, which are largely being defined, fought, and won by corporate interests. Both the impact of print and the discovery of the New world were predicated on networking tecnologies which not only enabled the dissemination of knowledge into new cultural and social spheres but also brought together people nations cultures and languages that were previously separated.
Key Argument
Who is an author? What is a work? What constitutes a text, particularly in an environment in which any text is readerly and writerly by potentially anyone?
Comparative Media Studies thus enables us to return to some of the most fundamental questions of our fi eld with new urgency: Who is an author? What is a work? What constitutes a text, particularly in an environment in which any text is readerly and writerly by potentially anyone?
Comparative Media Studies
While there is little doubt that the scholarship of comparative literature has been positively inflected by the so called visual turn of twentieth century opening the horizon of comparative literary and textual studies to the fields of art history. For Nelson, a hypertext is a:- Body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper [ … ] Such a system could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world ’ s written knowledge. (Nelson, 2004: pp. 134 – 145)
Comparative Data Studies:-
Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip - Fruin, the field of “ cultural analytics ” has emerged over the past five years to bring the tools of high - end computational analysis and data visualization to dissect large - scale cultural datasets. Jerome McGann argues with regard to the first in his elegant analysis of “ radiant textuality, ” the differences between the codex and the electronic versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. Digital books exist in what he calls N Dimensional Space . The data of Comparative Data studies is constantly expanding in terms of volume ,data type production and reception platform and analytic strategy.
Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies :
This is an economy based on abundance creative commons open access and the proliferation of copies not one based on scarcity property trade secrets and the sanctity of originals although as James Boyle points out, there are many corporate entities eager to regulate the public domain and control the “ commons of the mind. ” 10 For Boyle, the real danger is not unauthorized file sharing but “ failed sharing ” due to enclosures and strictures placed upon the world of the creative commons (Boyle, 2008 : p. 182). Scholars such as McKenzie Wark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick have even “ published ” early versions of their entire books on Commentpress.
Conclusion :-
To date, it has more than three million content pages, more than three hundred million edits, over ten million registered users, and articles in forty - seven languages (Wikipedia Statistics). This is a massive achievement for eight years of work. Wikipedia represents a dynamic, flexible, and open - ended network for knowledge creation and distribution that underscores process, collaboration, access, interactivity, and creativity, with an editing model and versioning system that documents every contingent decision made by every contributing author. At this moment in its short life, Wikipedia is already the most comprehensive, representative, and pervasive participatory platform for knowledge production ever created by humankind. In my opinion, that is worth some pause and reflection, perhaps even by scholars in a future disciplinary incarnation of Comparative Literature.
