Comparative Literary Studies, Central-European Cultural Space, and Theory of Literary History

Abstract

This article deals with current crucial issues concerning not only the history and theory of national literatures, but also comparative studies and their methodology in general. The author comments on the volumes of the History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe. In addition to his generally positive evaluation of this scholarly achievement, he draws several critical conclusions, beginning with the terms in the title of this immense project – “literary cultures” and “East-Central Europe.” He proceeds from the basic meaning of comparative literary studies and a certain tension between supranational and national literary structures in their diachronic and synchronic, as well as partial and general (or universal), aspects. He emphasizes the need to exercise great care and take into account not only the contemporary state of affairs – today’s more or less political status of literature – but also the diachronic structures that emerge from the deep basis of mentalities and cultures of the past. He comes to the conclusion that one can neither apply a strictly historical approach that transfers past situations into the current position, nor modernize the past. In this sense he offers several examples typical of these manipulations. These cannot serve as definite conclusions, but only as basic principles oscillating between universal and specific points of view in the form of a Decalogue.