Teaching “European Literature” Through the History of Criticism. The Concept of “Model Author” as the Starting Point

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to consider from the didactic point of view of the contemporary study of comparative literature the usefulness of the concept “model author/text” – as introduced by E. R. Curtius –, “canon author/text” and “classic” on the one hand, and the concept of “Western literature” on the other. The author begins with T. S. Eliot and his concept of the classic – while also taking into account the principal problems of the European literary critical tradition of the 18^th and 19^th centuries – before moving on to other key representatives of twentieth-century literary criticism (Auerbach, Curtius, Bloom, Said). – The concepts discussed enable an appropriate understanding of European literature – determined territorially, too – and its relationship to different, not only European literatures and cultural identities, since the author’s starting point is the intersection of identities formed as a consequence of the relationship between European culture and other cultures.