Early Work
Work considered foundational to the discipline of Comparative Literature include Transylvanian Hungarian Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz's scholarship, also the founding editor of the journal Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (1877) and Irish scholar H.M. Posnett's Comparative Literature (1886). However, antecedents can be found in the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his vision of "world literature" (Weltliteratur) and Russian Formalists credited Alexander Veselovsky with laying the groundwork for the discipline. Viktor Zhirmunsky, for instance, referred to Veselovsky as "the most remarkable representative of comparative literary study in Russian and European scholarship of the nineteenth century" (Zhirmunsky qtd. in Rachel Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance ; see also David Damrosch During the late 19th century, comparatists such as Fyodor Buslaev were chiefly concerned with deducing the purported Zeitgeist or "spirit of the times", which they assumed to be embodied in the literary output of each nation. Although many comparative works from this period would be judged chauvinistic, Eurocentric, or even racist by present-day standards, the intention of most scholars during this period was to increase the understanding of other cultures, not to assert superiority over them (although politicians and others from outside the field used their works for this purpose).
Read more about this topic: Comparative Literature
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or work:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“The best work of artists in any age is the work of innocence liberated by technical knowledge. The laboratory experiments that led to the theory of pure color equipped the impressionists to paint nature as if it had only just been created.”
—Nancy Hale (b. 1908)