Hello, I am Himanshi Parmar, student of MK Bhavnagar University. This blog i have written as a response to Thinking Activity, Which is a Part of my academic Work. Which we get after each unit. In this blog, i am going to discuss briefly about Three articles, 1) Sisir Kumar Das, ‘Why Comparative Indian Literature? (ed. Dev and Das,1989), 2) Amiya Dev, "Comparative Literature in India." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.4 (2000), 3) Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, “Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History”, Comparative Literature & World Literature, Volume 1 Number 1 Spring 2016.
What is Comparative Studies?
The studies which reveal similarities or differences between different markets, countries, aspects of companies, etc. They help to illustrate links and dissimilarities between these different elements. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary,
"Comparative Literature is the study of the interrelationship of the literature of two or more national cultures usually of differing languages and especially of the influences of one upon the other."
In another words Comparative Literature is traditionally known as the study of two or more literatures in comparison (English and German, for example) and their multi-dimensional components which may encompass aspects such as the historical, gender, economic, cultural, social, philosophical, religious, and linguistic factors of the distinct cultures being analyzed.
Comparative Literature focuses on the study of literature from different cultures, nations, and genres, and explores relationships between literature and other forms of cultural expression. Comparative Literature poses such questions as, What is the place of literature in society? How does literature as a form change over time, and in relation to other forms of making art? How does literature shape and respond to values, social movements, or political contexts? Click to read more.
Article - 1
1) Sisir Kumar Das, ‘Why Comparative Indian Literature? (ed. Dev and Das,1989)
Watch video recording of this essay here,
About Sisir Kumar Das
Sisir Kumar Das (1936–2003) was a linguist, poet, playwright, translator, comparatist and a prolific scholar of Indian literature. He is considered by many as the "doyen of Indian literary historiographers". Almost singlehandedly Das built an integrated history of Indian literature composed of many languages, a task that had seemed to many important scholars of Indian literature to be “a historian’s despair”. His three volumes (among proposed ten volumes) A History of Indian Literature (Western Impact: Indian Response 1800–1910; Struggle for Freedom: Triumph and Tragedy 1911–1956; From Courtly to Popular 500–1399) is credited for having devised hitherto absent methods necessary for situating diverse Indian literary cultures in history. Apart from this, another monumental work in Das’ scholarly oeuvre is the multi-volume English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, edited by him.
Das was also a poet and playwright in Bangla. Having spent most of his professional life in Delhi.he was awarded the prestigious Rabindra Puraskar by the Government of West Bengal twice (for The Shadow of the Cross in 1976 and for The Artist in Chains in 1987), it was for his scholarly rather than literary works. Click to read more about him.
Introduction
In the essay sisir Kumar Das described about comparative literature as a interdisciplinary field. Comparative literature is not just limited to one or two languages but it studies literature across national border, time period, across boundaries, across language and genes. According to sisir Kumar Das any one literature or language is not able to achieve literary and cultural achievements. It gives us geographical and Chronological border perspective. Comparative literature provides better understanding of culture not only of their own but of others also. It also help people to become better global citizens. The essay was well constructed by Sisir Kumar Das.
Key ideas
In the beginning Sisir Das stated that some scholars tried the idea of Indian literature that emphasing unity of themes and forms. It displays threads of unity in two ways. that are, 1) Multilinguality and 2) Multi religion or Multicultural. These are totally limited. There are many Indo - Anglican writers like Sri Aurobindo and others but no writer we found that gave us critical framework to study Indian literature to study.study of Indian Languages under the shadow of Comparative literature can give us proper understanding that how to study Indian Literature.
The term comparative Indian Literature is not just to define Indian literature but it has wider meaning, it is uses to define necessity of the qualifier. Das further notes that we must think of relation between comparative literature and Indian Comparative literature and has to study literary relevance between it. In the article Sisir Kumar Das uses a word 'Weltliterature' that was coined by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. According to Sisir Das Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is,
"A poet who attempted to bring together the literature of different civilizations was also the first man in history to speak of Weltliterature."
Gothe said that, 'National Literature is now rather an Unmeaning term'. It was said on 31 January 1827 in Conversation with Eckermann. Later Sisir Das Mentioned that,
"Gothe did not tell us how to hasten the approach of world literature nor did he say what exactly it meant. But we assume that by Weltliterature he meant the memorable works in all language od world, rather than the assemblage of all literatures."
Further Sisir Kumar Das wrote that the last hundred years the western comparaist kept themselves Restricted to Western literature. West and East literature came in contact very early in history. Firstly Europe came to knoof Hebrew literature on the day it accepted Christianity. For this Das gave example of 'Pancatantra' that reached Europe through its Arabic and Syrian versions before the Renaissance. By the end of Eighteen century Europe discovered Sanskrit, that brought revolution in Linguistics. Indian works started influencing finest minds of the European world. François Jost wrote about Western Criticism, we is resulted comparative literature is started being use as comparative western literature and even today it is remains.
Comparative western literature is study of different national literature, but comparative Indian literature is study of literature of one nation in many languages. Western used the term comparative national literature because they have one language in one nation for example English in Britain and America, French in France, but in India we have various language like Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam etc, so here as per Sisir Das the principle of relationship between national literature needs revision.
Comparative Western Literature - The study of Different national literature in same language.
Comparative Indian Literature - The study of One national Literature written in various languages.
Sisir Kumar Das further wrote that Comparative literature has to be both Intralinguistic and interlinguistic. Sometimes study of British and American literature or Canadian French literature and French literature is not easy to compare because this kind of studies are Intralinguistic. Similarly a study of Bengali and Hindi or Gujrati and Hindi cannot be dismissed from comparative literature because they form parts of one national literature. Time period, Historical connections, political dimensions, linguistic history etc play vital role in comparative studies. Indian literature can be argued from two directions as per Sisir Das. He further notes that, 'Whatever be the goal of comparative literature, it must have a terra firma, a solid ground.' Literature deals with the concrete not with abstractions. Literature is born of language and yet it goes beyond language, because it is nourished by culture. Indian literature is different than other literature because it has variation of language, culture but same geography and roots. So when we study Comparative literature in India then it should be 'Comparative Indian Literature'
Next, Sisir Kumar Das said that, 'Multilingualism is fact of Indian Society and of Indian literature. Literary history of India is a history of multilingual literary activity. Sometimes two language not just use for interaction but also it giving rise to a new language and Literature, like Urdu Language. Writers not just use two language, one is native language and other is classic or Foreign language but they also switched from one native language to another's native language like Urdu to Hindi, Oriya to Bengali, From English to Bengali etc. In article, 'Towards 'Comparative Indian Literature', Amiya Dev said that,
'Comparision is right reason for us because, one, we are multilingual, and two, we are Thrid World.'
Professor Dev points out that 'the tools of western comparison are hardly adequate to deal with our literary situation.' In this article Sisir Kumar Das also wrote about phycological conditions and influence on authors mind. As per him, Third World situation has imposed certain psychological restrictions on us. We not just learned languages that belongs to our colonial masters but it also tied us within several western literary categories, styles, and rules for writing that writer should follow in order to gain respectability. That's what narrowed mind and imagination of authors. At last Sisir Das also gave solution for it, In order to make literary free from all psychological restrictions and boundaries, one should need to look their literature from within in deeper way, it can help to break any inhibition and prejudice about literature of other parts of the world. Sisir Kumar Das end his essay with the lines,
'Our Journey is not from Comparative Literature to Comparative Indian literature, but from Comparative Indian Literature to Comparative Literature.'
Read about other articles here.
Article - 2
Article - 3
I hope my blog will be helpful to you, Thank you!
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