Lakhasly

Comparative literature, despite accusations of methodological vagueness, employs robust methodologies yielding concrete results. Schmeling addressed methodological challenges, while Miner's Comparative Poetics, influenced by Étiemble, Wellek, and Liu, argued for the universality of the epic-lyric-drama trilogy across literary systems, differing only in emphasis. Marino, using a phenomenological approach, focuses on objective parallels, distinguishing between historically parallel yet unconnected works ("parallel polygenesis") and those demonstrating influence. The discipline's flexibility has enabled its survival and growth, as evidenced by Saussy's declaration of its "triumph." Comparative literature's cosmopolitanism has overcome Eurocentric biases, engaging with world literature and redefining canonicity. Saussy's positive assessment rests on the universality of human experience and verbal art, emphasizing the centrality of "literariness." The discipline's focus on close reading and the study of literary creation and reception, encompassing new communication technologies and their influence on reading practices, underlines the enduring necessity of a comparative perspective for understanding the literary phenomenon.

Comparative literature has often been accused of a certain methodological indefini-tion, and comparatists often seem reluctant to clarify these issues. But though it is obvious that comparative literature, because of the sheer vastness of the areas it covers, implies a certain utopian ambition, this is not to say that the discipline does not rely on methodologies that are capable of producing concrete results.
Manfred Schmeling paid special attention to the methodological difficulties of comparatism, and proposed various types of strategy to overcome these. Earl Miner, for his part, elaborated a Comparative Poetics, which he subtitled An Inter-cultural Essay on Theories of Literature. For Miner, it was a case of comparing the different "conceptions or theories or systems of literature" (Comparative Poetics 4), genres, and the invariants that are expressed discursively by creators and thinkers throughout history, both in the West and in the East. It is no coincidence that Miner would cite as major figures of inspiration Étiemble and Wellek, nor that he would dedicate his work, in memoriam, to James J.Y. Liu, the author of Chinese Theories of Literature. Perhaps Miner's major conclusion is that the generic trilogy of epic-lyric-drama is obligatory in all literary systems, as the only difference between the European Aristotelian tradition and the Eastern Sino-Japanese tradi-tion is that in the former, lyric is initially formulated only implicitly, whereas in the latter, it is exactly the reverse, with the poetics of drama and narration deriving from a consideration of lyric.
Marino (Comparatisme 214), on the other hand, frames his new comparative literature in terms of a phenomenological approach, and is faithful to the Husserlian return to the "things themselves" (zu den Sachen selbst), as opposed to more super-ficial morphological descriptions of literary phenomena. The analysis of analogies and similarities would, from this perspective, resist the construction of supposed genetic relations in order to discover fundamental theoretical invariants.
With regard to parallels, which Marino understands as objective phenomena, he proposes that we distinguish between two major groups, which can themselves be further divided into two distinct possibilities (Comparatisme 224-32). On one hand, there are those that can be understood historically but without positing contacts or influence (what he terms "parallel polygenesis") and those that can be understood as the result of contact and influence, as Goethe and Carlyle understood the pro-cess of literary interchange. The first model of parallelism is completely removed from genetic relations, and seeks contrasting parallels between authors and works of distinct languages and historical moments, with the aim of revealing singularities and differences, or, moving in the opposite direction, proposing general parallels between literatures.
Sufficient time has passed since the Bernheimer Report of 1993 to allow us to respond with certainty as to whether the porosity and flexibility of comparative literature has allowed it to retain its status as an academic discipline in the face of the diversity and range of cultural studies. We argue that comparative literature has risen to the challenge, showing itself to have enough resources to grow out of its contradictions, integrate new perspectives, and progress along the path of interdisciplinarity.
Saussy's report confirms this diagnosis, and Saussy ("Exquisite Cadavers") goes so far as to declare the "triumph of comparative literature," which not only has recovered from its end-of-the-century crisis, but currently is invested with a new legitimation and authority, playing a role in literary studies not dissimilar to that of the first violin in an orchestra. Departments of Comparative Literature have even demonstrated a generous hospitality "to the miscellaneous, disfavored, outmoded, or too-good-to-be-true approaches" ("Exquisite Cadavers" 34). The basic cosmo-politanism of comparative literature has allowed it to surpass the limitations of cultural studies, and to correct its own Eurocentric biases. At the same time, it has helped in framing debates about the canon and opened itself to new models of canonicity. In its relationship to world literature, it seems as if we have almost returned to the moment of the encounter of Goethe and Ampère, where that discipline has become not so much a rival but "an object, even a project, of comparative literature" (11).
Saussy's verdict is neither fanciful nor self-interested. It is founded on strong foundations, not least of which are "the universality of human experience" (12), and the fact that "no human culture is without verbal art" (17). The terrain that comparative literature explores is as solid as that special use of language to create beauty that we call literature. For these reasons, Saussy argues for "the centrality of literariness to the discipline," a focus that should also be central to the three other branches of literary studies, and especially, without disdaining history and criticism, the theory of literature. As Saussy notes, "Everyone who made or applied Theory became a comparatist" (18).
To study literature is to read texts, to practice"close reading," so as to discover an aesthetic unity from linguistic organization. These texts form part of a system of actions at the heart of society, the most important of these actions being literary creation and reading, but the distinct forms of mediation of literary texts and the derivation of secondary texts from these are also of interest. This does not inevitably lead to the consideration of other discourses and codes, rather to the consideration of the role that new communication technologies play, not only in the diffusion of literature, but also in the transformation of creative practices and in their influence on the cultural make-up and "acts of reading" (Iser) of the new generations of "digital natives" (Prensky).
Perhaps more than ever, to gain an in-depth knowledge of the literary phenom-enon requires a comparative perspective, a perspective that can be achieved only with the outlook, attitude, and methodology of an academic discipline which has for two centuries gone under the name of comparative literature.