比较文学的挑战

The Challenge of Comparative Literature

比较文学为批判性、理论性的跨学科研究项目提供了自由试验的场域,这一点对于其他学科具有示范作用,会在总体上影响到文学研究和文化研究的方向。在当今时代,对比较文学而言,首要的挑战就是一种全球性视角的必要性,另一个挑战则是由文化研究的兴起造成的。比较文学的研究范围因此而迅速扩展,甚至于根本无法把握。但是,比较文学也许能够借此获得一种新的身份:作为最广维度上的文学研究场域——作为某种跨国现象的文学研究;而比较文学作为一般的文学研究的场域,将为比较诗学提供一个家园。比较文学要逐渐消除其原来的欧洲中心主义特征,实现向一种更加全球化的学科的转化。

Comparative literature has been where critical and theoretical interdisciplinary projects could be freely tried, with results that are exemplary for others and thus affect the direction of literary and cultural studies at large. In the current era, the first challenge for comparative literature is the necessity of a global perspective and the second one is posed by the rise of cultural studies, which is connected to the changes brought to literary studies by what we in the West have called just ＂theory＂. Comparative literature thus has become a discipline of such overwhelming scope that it no longer sounds like an academic field at all. Having in large measure made possible the expansion of literary studies into cultural studies, comparative literature might claim a new identity, as the site of literary study in its broadest dimensions -- the study of literature as a transnational phenomenon. Comparative literature, as the site of the study of literature in general, would provide a home for a comparative poetics. Comparative literature needs to be transformed from a Eurocentric discipline to a more global one.