ASSIGNMENT OF: COMPARATIVE LITERAURE

ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED TO: MAM RUBIA

TOPIC: Comparative literature study in non western world stresses the politicization of literature and rejects the

formalist approach

ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED BY: FATIMA GUL

ROLL NO: 1383 MA F11

DATE: 13May, 2013

Comparative literature is the study of literature and other cultural expressions across

linguistic and cultural boundaries. Comparative literature postulates a unity in man’s social and

historical development. Since similar social relations have existed among different peoples,

historical and typological analogies may be observed in the development of different literatures

during a single historical epoch. Comparative literature may therefore study single literary

works, literary genres and styles, the work of individual writers, or literary trends. 

The aim of comparative literature is to bridge gap between different nations, civilizations

by comparing their literature. According to C.S Lewis, literature adds to reality, it does not

simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and

provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become. 

The beauty of Literature unfolds its wings when you discover that your longings are

universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone, you belong is narrated by F.

Scott Fitzgerald. But the dilemma is that western world in general politicizes the literature of

non western world and presents its false reputation. This idea comes in to lime light when non

western writers actually realized the situation and start writing about their own culture.

The formalist approach to literature was developed at the beginning of the 20th century

and remained the primary approach to literary study until the 1970s, when other literary theories

began to gain popularity. As the name suggests, formalism is concerned primarily with form.

Rather than interpreting what a text means, the formalist analyzes how that that meaning is

communicated. A critical approach that analyzes, interprets, or evaluates the inherent features of

a text. These features include not only grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as

meter and tropes.

Edward Said his book ‘Orientalism’ gave many words like ‘essentialism’, ‘Euro

centrism’, ‘Orientalist discourse’, the ‘us-them dichotomy’ he was one of the earliest writers

to have drawn attention to the systematic nature of the western way of talking about the Orient.

He has highlighted the politization of non western countries in many of his works which proves

the idea of discreetness by western people.

Countries like Africa which come under the map of non western world unluckily, also

suffers from this politicization. Although Africa in itself is very rich and bears multidimensional

civilization but unfortunately West invaded them on the name of civilization and always presents

their barbaric side to universe throughout the history. Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall

Apart has described about the beauty of land and its people. He has also portrayed the side of

picture which is painted by the brutality of west colonizers. “The white man is very clever. He

came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and

allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one.

He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” 

One review in the magazine Black Orpheus said: "The book as a whole creates for the

reader such a vivid picture of Ibo life that the plot and characters are little more than

symbols representing a way of life lost irrevocably within living memory.”

Completely rejecting the formalist approach that what is the beauty hinting through the words of

nonwestern literature, completely fail to acknowledge the thoughts, ideas, philosophies and

themes ,west certainly prove their own uncivilized behavior .

  Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth suggests “Colonialism hardly ever exploits the

whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it

extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing

certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its

path of under-development and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply.” 

Non western culture unfortunately suffers from the politicization not just collectively but

also at the individual level. V.S Naipaul when met the two brave girls in Malaysia, who were

covering themselves commented that “veil is an aggression” for people doing it. So we see that

non western even at individual is not safe from the piercing comments of west.

In Literature Lost, John Ellis, subjects the widely held assumptions and fundamental

arguments of this politicized view of literature to rigorous logical analysis. The result is a

systematic discrediting of many of the broad notions that underlay race-class-gender criticism

(now often called "cultural studies"). A defender of literary theory as it was once practiced in the

1930s, 40s and 50s, Ellis argues that what now passes for "theory" is a "degraded and corrupt

shadow of what theory should be", often marred by logical inconsistency, reductivism,

ahistoricism, and herd-think. As if this were not bad enough, the politicization of literary studies,

and now of other areas of the humanities, is having, according to Ellis, a harmful effect on

academic culture, undermining respect for, and intellectual commitment to, knowledge,

common-sense, rational thought, scholarly integrity, and collegial debate.

The "progressive" political bias so obvious, according to Ellis, is an expression of a deep

hostility to Western civilization. Ironically, this hostility is itself an old tradition in the West.

Periodically, "alienated insiders," usually intellectuals and writers have turned on the very

civilization that nurtures and rewards them .Their animus, Ellis suggests, is the result of anger

and frustration over the flaws, inconsistencies, and retrogressions of their culture. Although these

flaws and inconsistencies exist in every society, they provoke a more angry response in the West

because this civilization promises so much, and its failure to fulfill this promise seems all the

more unforgivable. At some point, anger about the "establishment," or "patriarchal

oppression," or "racism" spins out of control and puts an end to clear thinking. At this point,

these alienated (or adversarial) intellectuals, disillusioned and bittered, are unable to recognize

let alone value the greatest achievements of their civilization. They rivet on whatever seems

negative. To point out to them just how much progress Western civilization has made, and how

enlightened it is when compared with other cultures on the planet, "simply angers" them, for

they know "that the core of Western society is rotten, however rosy its surface appearance".

Ironically, when critics condemn Western civilization for its misdeeds, hypocrisies, and

failures, they do so, Ellis observes, with values and concepts derived directly from Western

civilization ("racism" and "human rights" make no sense unless one accepts Enlightenment

ideas about our common humanity). "To demand an end to racism and sexism is not to reject

Western society but, on the contrary, to ally oneself with certain Western values". It was the

Western tradition, and especially the European Enlightenment (irrefutably the work of dead

white males) that "socially constructed" those liberating ideas of individual liberty, political

democracy, the rule of law, human rights, gender equality, and cultural freedom that constitute

the precious legacy to which most of the world aspires .On this point Ellis quotes the forceful

words of Arthur Schlesinger from The Disuniting of America:

These are European ideas, not Asian, not African.... There is surely no reason for Western

civilization to have guilt trips laid on it by champions of cultures based on despotism,

superstition, tribalism, and fanaticism.... The West needs no lectures on the superior virtue of

those 'sun people' who sustained slavery until Western imperialism abolished it...who still keep

women in subjection and cut off their clitorises, who carry out racial persecutions not only

against Indians and other Asians but also against fellow Africans from the wrong tribes...and

who in their tyrannies and massacres, their Idi Amins and Boukassas, have stamped with

utmost brutality on human rights.1

1 http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr1998/ellis.html