1 00:00:11,600 --> 00:00:17,600 Welcome to this last lecture in this short series, and thanks again for dealing with the day change. 2 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:21,860 There are two classes coming up, Russian formalism and Czech structuralism. 3 00:00:21,860 --> 00:00:28,610 Next week we are going back to Tuesdays, unless improbably, yet another thing occurs which causes a day change. 4 00:00:28,610 --> 00:00:39,260 But it's meant to be on Tuesday at 12:00, unless you hear otherwise in seminar room B and after that reading micro texts that will be in week six, 5 00:00:39,260 --> 00:00:44,870 largely prose, my critics and very micro indeed. Some of them. 6 00:00:44,870 --> 00:00:50,330 I promised those of you who were here last week that this was going to constitute a 7 00:00:50,330 --> 00:00:56,780 philosophical approach to comparative literature rather than a more exemplary one. 8 00:00:56,780 --> 00:01:06,320 So here it comes. I want to talk about a practise that's involved in all reading, yet has hardly ever been the subject. 9 00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:15,890 The explicit subject of literary theory comparison in the broadest sense of the term is the literary process, 10 00:01:15,890 --> 00:01:21,800 which enables us to perceive similarity and difference. 11 00:01:21,800 --> 00:01:30,140 Smells and ideas cannot be distinguished as such without perceiving their similarities and 12 00:01:30,140 --> 00:01:39,980 differences to other smells and ideas will cannot be exercised without comparing options. 13 00:01:39,980 --> 00:01:49,280 To choose comes from gusto and involves Sainsbury's would have us do tasting the difference. 14 00:01:49,280 --> 00:01:52,910 A critic describes a literary work as, for example, 15 00:01:52,910 --> 00:02:03,320 mimetic only after comparing it with both life and other literary works, which are perhaps less mimetic. 16 00:02:03,320 --> 00:02:11,930 Matthew Arnold, who coined the term comparative literature as a translation of the French literature Campari, 17 00:02:11,930 --> 00:02:19,070 claimed in his inaugural lecture at Oxford in 1857 that no single event, 18 00:02:19,070 --> 00:02:28,190 no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literature. 19 00:02:28,190 --> 00:02:33,020 In our own century, and I do mean this one, Richard Rorty wrote, 20 00:02:33,020 --> 00:02:39,980 Good criticism is a matter of bouncing some of the books you have read off the rest of the books you have read. 21 00:02:39,980 --> 00:02:47,900 He might have added that good reading of criticism involves bouncing the criticism you are reading off the rest of the criticism you have read, 22 00:02:47,900 --> 00:02:58,460 listening to lectures, of course, likewise. Yet this, as I've just been outlining, it is not a comparison in the strict sense of the term. 23 00:02:58,460 --> 00:03:01,490 Look at the first quotation on your handouts. 24 00:03:01,490 --> 00:03:06,620 This, by the way, is going to be the only time in this lecture that I'm actually directing you to your handouts. 25 00:03:06,620 --> 00:03:12,950 Most of the rest of the quotations won't even appear in the lecture and are there just to create atmosphere, 26 00:03:12,950 --> 00:03:17,540 providing aid to contemplation and keep you occupied if you get bored. 27 00:03:17,540 --> 00:03:24,050 This the first point is my own definition of comparison in the strict sense of the term, 28 00:03:24,050 --> 00:03:31,790 which involves paying a similar quantity and quality of attention to a discrete number of 29 00:03:31,790 --> 00:03:40,850 objects in order to determine their similarities and differences with regard to possession, 30 00:03:40,850 --> 00:03:48,400 lack of possession or degree of possession of a particular quality. 31 00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:54,610 A minority of literary criticism practised is of this kind. 32 00:03:54,610 --> 00:03:59,710 Both of the Internet, national into linguistic, into artistic kind, 33 00:03:59,710 --> 00:04:10,870 which goes under the banner of comparative literature and of the criticism which doesn't the minority may be slightly larger in the first case, 34 00:04:10,870 --> 00:04:20,470 but it is still a minority. A comparison of George Eliot with George saw on a given topic may have the interest, 35 00:04:20,470 --> 00:04:29,530 but also the complication of involving linguistic and cultural variables which are not directly connected to what ever topic it is. 36 00:04:29,530 --> 00:04:34,840 You are comparing them on a comparison of George Eliot with Elizabeth Gaskell, 37 00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:45,820 which involves far fewer circumstantial variables, may therefore be more cleanly comparative and therefore more comparative. 38 00:04:45,820 --> 00:04:51,760 But only relatively any two writers have differences of circumstance, 39 00:04:51,760 --> 00:05:01,830 and any comparison has to be performed against a ground, a background which is to some degree abstract. 40 00:05:01,830 --> 00:05:07,980 But how often does one do symmetric comparison after what I've been talking about, asymmetric comparison, 41 00:05:07,980 --> 00:05:16,920 paying a similar degree of attention to and quality of attention, asymmetric comparison, 42 00:05:16,920 --> 00:05:24,900 which involves paying a different quantity or quality of attention to to compare grander things which are compared, 43 00:05:24,900 --> 00:05:30,480 has strong similarities with a lot of criticism, which isn't usually considered comparative. 44 00:05:30,480 --> 00:05:36,000 For example, if you study the influence of big oil, the 70s is El Ingenuously et al Gore, 45 00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:46,800 Don Quixote de la Mancha on Nikos Kazantzakis Vios capability to Aleksi Sorba, The Life and Adventures of Alexis Sorba. 46 00:05:46,800 --> 00:05:48,390 That kind of study, 47 00:05:48,390 --> 00:05:58,350 that kind of influence study is actually structurally most resembles studies which aren't normally considered comparison comparative. 48 00:05:58,350 --> 00:06:06,450 For example, the representation of attitudes towards sex in rural 1930s Greece in the latter novel, 49 00:06:06,450 --> 00:06:12,570 because in both cases you're looking for features of one complex object, 50 00:06:12,570 --> 00:06:22,590 a novel in the first case, Don Quixote, or a social phenomenon, an aspect of the culture in the other in a different work of literature. 51 00:06:22,590 --> 00:06:27,930 So the discussion of any topic in literature involves a comparison of the form. 52 00:06:27,930 --> 00:06:35,640 Looking for X in Y and the X and Y study is the template for much literary criticism, 53 00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:42,120 very little of what is written on comparative literature, therefore concerns comparison. 54 00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:48,480 The position of comparison as a topic in philosophy is also undeservedly obscure. 55 00:06:48,480 --> 00:06:52,140 No English language reference book of philosophy. 56 00:06:52,140 --> 00:07:01,170 The multivolume encyclopaedias, the one volume companions of which I'm aware has an entry for the term comparison, 57 00:07:01,170 --> 00:07:07,080 despite the fact that comparison is as important a method to philosophy as it is to literary criticism. 58 00:07:07,080 --> 00:07:12,570 And also it is in itself fraught with philosophical implications. 59 00:07:12,570 --> 00:07:18,060 Therefore, all literary criticism is comparative in the broad sense. 60 00:07:18,060 --> 00:07:26,520 Most literary criticism, including most that gets called comparative literature, isn't comparative in the strict sense. 61 00:07:26,520 --> 00:07:30,420 Now, if any of you have done any reading on the subject comparative literature, 62 00:07:30,420 --> 00:07:38,490 you will know that it is described with almost reassuring regularity as ANX genic 63 00:07:38,490 --> 00:07:44,310 makes you feel that English is a discipline which is relatively sure of itself. 64 00:07:44,310 --> 00:07:49,710 Look out for whether complet whenever you come across, it gets capital letters. 65 00:07:49,710 --> 00:07:52,890 There's no agreement on this articles coming out at the moment. 66 00:07:52,890 --> 00:08:01,680 Sometimes there is even veering between complet with capital Seasonale and small Seasonale within the same article. 67 00:08:01,680 --> 00:08:12,780 This anxiety about what comparative literature is is related to the fact that it can't be easily defined by either method or matter. 68 00:08:12,780 --> 00:08:18,870 In the 1970s, Robert Clemens commented that comparative literature sometimes features in university curricula, 69 00:08:18,870 --> 00:08:30,900 but very few people know what they mean by the term. In 2006, Robert, when Injia claimed that nothing is written or published in comparative, 70 00:08:30,900 --> 00:08:36,750 those words italicised now the problem of defining the subject by method. 71 00:08:36,750 --> 00:08:43,470 I've already suggested most of what's done under its remit isn't strictly comparative. 72 00:08:43,470 --> 00:08:47,970 Therefore, comparative literature, world literature and general literature. 73 00:08:47,970 --> 00:08:52,590 And if any of you are from or have any familiarity with the states, you'll know that these terms are much more common. 74 00:08:52,590 --> 00:09:01,380 They're world literature, general literature courses. They're often imprecisely distinguished from each other as opposed. 75 00:09:01,380 --> 00:09:04,830 Literatura give my literature to literature, 76 00:09:04,830 --> 00:09:16,860 General and Literatura whenever or authors all imprecisely distinguished from the equivalents of comparative literature in those languages. 77 00:09:16,860 --> 00:09:25,280 The question then arises of whether comparative literature should not simply become the study of literature. 78 00:09:25,280 --> 00:09:30,950 Proponents of departments of literature include Venezuela and Austin Warren, 79 00:09:30,950 --> 00:09:39,840 who in the 1940s argued against the idea of national literature's, quote, There's just literature. 80 00:09:39,840 --> 00:09:45,240 Fourteen years later, well, I wish that we could simply speak of the study of literature and that there were, 81 00:09:45,240 --> 00:09:52,800 as Albir thiebaud day proposed professors of literature, just as they were professors of philosophy and of history. 82 00:09:52,800 --> 00:10:00,600 Twenty six, Jonathan Colores argued that the turn to culture, cultural specificity, in other words, 83 00:10:00,600 --> 00:10:06,450 along what might be national lines makes sense for national literature departments. 84 00:10:06,450 --> 00:10:11,640 The division of literature by national or linguistic boundaries was always rather dubious, 85 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:16,170 but such divisions as these form a reasonable way of studying culture. 86 00:10:16,170 --> 00:10:24,570 This would leave comparative literature with the distinct role of studying literature as the site of study of literature. 87 00:10:24,570 --> 00:10:29,810 In general, comparative literature would form a home for poetics. 88 00:10:29,810 --> 00:10:35,570 Objections to such plans come from those who consider that literature should always be 89 00:10:35,570 --> 00:10:42,890 related to studied in relation to culture in a broader sense and to other art forms, 90 00:10:42,890 --> 00:10:49,050 some consider, in fact, that the subject of comparative literature should not concern literature alone. 91 00:10:49,050 --> 00:10:56,390 It should be the place where the relationship of literature to the visual arts and the sonic arts, for example, are studied. 92 00:10:56,390 --> 00:11:02,690 It's also objected that the so-called general study of literature rarely fulfils that remit, 93 00:11:02,690 --> 00:11:10,520 often in practise consisting of the study of European literature and its nearest relatives. 94 00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:15,230 Well, I mean, you could easily get around that problem. If what you are studying is a European literature course, 95 00:11:15,230 --> 00:11:22,070 then it should simply be called a European literature course, not general or world or comparative literature. 96 00:11:22,070 --> 00:11:26,660 But I also see no problem at all in studying European literature. 97 00:11:26,660 --> 00:11:32,870 They make sense together. Those national literatures, they were made for each other. 98 00:11:32,870 --> 00:11:40,790 Both parts of the title comparative literature then imperfectly denote the subjects de facto remit. 99 00:11:40,790 --> 00:11:51,080 So I would like at this point to make a proposal which cuts through the Gordian knot of many of the problems of definition I've just outlined. 100 00:11:51,080 --> 00:11:58,370 If one were to conceive of academic departments as a city which is built up haphazardly from the Middle Ages, 101 00:11:58,370 --> 00:12:05,630 then I am a zealous town planner proposing to raise the city to the ground and rebuild it on a grid plan. 102 00:12:05,630 --> 00:12:11,630 These are perhaps not serious academic proposals. They are highly unlikely to be adopted, 103 00:12:11,630 --> 00:12:20,300 but they will at least illustrate my conception of what comparative literature is so under of my plans, my grid plans. 104 00:12:20,300 --> 00:12:29,600 Each university would have two types of structure to be called, for example, faculties and divisions. 105 00:12:29,600 --> 00:12:37,580 The faculties would be named after disciplines or objects of studies which have a clearly correspondant discipline. 106 00:12:37,580 --> 00:12:44,250 So, for example, his history of historiography, literature for literary criticism, biology, 107 00:12:44,250 --> 00:12:52,670 biology and so forth, the divisions would correspond to categories of subject matter. 108 00:12:52,670 --> 00:12:58,130 So you've got to conceive of squares. You've got the faculties, let's say, along the top divisions down the side. 109 00:12:58,130 --> 00:13:06,680 So for the arts and humanities subjects, India, Russia, Britain might have their own divisions. 110 00:13:06,680 --> 00:13:16,190 All students and all academics would be obliged to belong to at least one and rarely more than two faculties and divisions. 111 00:13:16,190 --> 00:13:22,580 So, for example, I would belong to the literature faculty and probably the British and Russian divisions. 112 00:13:22,580 --> 00:13:30,890 Someone working on Tolstoy's relationship to the artist rapine would belong to the faculties of literature and art and to the Russian division. 113 00:13:30,890 --> 00:13:37,220 Someone else researching English common law would belong to the law faculty and the British division. 114 00:13:37,220 --> 00:13:46,040 Such a warp and weft of discipline and subject matter would encourage both discipline, Arati and interdisciplinarity. 115 00:13:46,040 --> 00:13:54,950 Literary theory would be taught in the faculty of literature using using examples from different languages, 116 00:13:54,950 --> 00:14:04,250 thereby avoiding the current replication of a lot of theoretical teaching between, for example, the English faculty and modern foreign languages. 117 00:14:04,250 --> 00:14:09,530 Someone currently belonging to a comparative literature department would simply belong to 118 00:14:09,530 --> 00:14:15,440 one or more divisions and either the literature faculty alone or also to the history, 119 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:25,040 sociology, philosophy, theology, art or music faculty. The theory of literary comparison would be taught in the literature faculty. 120 00:14:25,040 --> 00:14:36,130 The phrase comparative literature would be reserved to describe criticism, which in a fairly strict sense compares literary works with each other. 121 00:14:36,130 --> 00:14:42,320 Those who simply, as Peter Brookes claimed, of himself as a graduate student are not comparing literature. 122 00:14:42,320 --> 00:14:48,500 Just working in more than one language would consider themselves to be working in literature. 123 00:14:48,500 --> 00:14:54,470 Those working in into artistic study would describe themselves as doing just that. 124 00:14:54,470 --> 00:15:01,160 The benefits are endless. By the way, it means that somebody studying modern foreign languages would be able to choose whether what 125 00:15:01,160 --> 00:15:06,690 they are interested in is linguistics or literature or the history of the country concerned. 126 00:15:06,690 --> 00:15:11,120 So somebody who ultimately wants to become a historian of France can become a 127 00:15:11,120 --> 00:15:17,020 member of the history faculty and the French division and do that from the outset. 128 00:15:17,020 --> 00:15:28,900 I've already tried to define comparison as a verb, but a comparison is both an action and its outcome, 129 00:15:28,900 --> 00:15:39,550 making a comparison can refer both to the process of comparing and to the description of this process and its result. 130 00:15:39,550 --> 00:15:45,550 For example, if I say that a historian compares Hitler and Stalin, I can mean several things. 131 00:15:45,550 --> 00:15:52,390 By that, I could mean that the historian is trying to discover the similarities and differences of those men, 132 00:15:52,390 --> 00:15:59,530 or that he draws attention to such similarities and differences as he perceives them to have. 133 00:15:59,530 --> 00:16:11,440 This is an important ambiguity between the performance and the results of comparison between the discovery of the results and their dissemination. 134 00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:13,690 If you're making a comparison implicitly, 135 00:16:13,690 --> 00:16:23,790 you are publicising it and therefore think the lack of a clear distinction in this case between empiricism and rhetoric. 136 00:16:23,790 --> 00:16:28,140 Language is not necessarily necessary to do comparison, 137 00:16:28,140 --> 00:16:38,220 but it is to its description in which it can prove limited in English, the language of comparison is peculiarly crude. 138 00:16:38,220 --> 00:16:47,760 It tends to imply one of three positions which can be approximated to similarity, difference and neutrality. 139 00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:56,250 One compares something and with or to something else and is neutral. 140 00:16:56,250 --> 00:17:07,170 You compare cats and dogs with suggests an expectation of similarity and to suggests an expectation of difference. 141 00:17:07,170 --> 00:17:14,700 Something is the same as something, but. But it is different to from or than it. 142 00:17:14,700 --> 00:17:23,040 Apart from the fact that different two is more common in British English and different and different than is more 143 00:17:23,040 --> 00:17:32,970 common in North American English to implies orientation towards the differing other from implies departure from it, 144 00:17:32,970 --> 00:17:38,430 and then implies an alternative to and possible displacement of it. 145 00:17:38,430 --> 00:17:44,590 The comparison should therefore compare and choose his or her words with care. 146 00:17:44,590 --> 00:17:51,490 In contrast to to contrast contrast, to stand against, 147 00:17:51,490 --> 00:18:03,760 to compare means to regard or represent as analogous or similar and intransitive to be of the same quality or value as, 148 00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:09,550 for example, Jin compares with rum in alcohol content, 149 00:18:09,550 --> 00:18:20,080 hence examination questions which of the kind that used to exist that begin compare and on the other hand, contrast. 150 00:18:20,080 --> 00:18:29,770 Correspondingly, a compare, a somewhat archaic term now is an analogy equal or rival of something else. 151 00:18:29,770 --> 00:18:44,970 Many terms for comparison stress like notes over difference to compare is to bring together parities for glycation makes life the same. 152 00:18:44,970 --> 00:18:59,610 Suaveness makes a roughly equal, and Astrud Munier is a simile as well as a comparison, the ancient Greek parable from Padda plus a casting, 153 00:18:59,610 --> 00:19:07,920 throwing or putzing is a placing side by side or an analogy in a parable, as in an allegory, 154 00:19:07,920 --> 00:19:13,320 something is made to stand for something else on the basis of similarity. 155 00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:21,270 Parabola was borrowed in the Latin parabola or comparison and in post classical Latin. 156 00:19:21,270 --> 00:19:32,780 It is an allegory, proverb, discourse or speech and expansion of meaning over time, which acknowledges the importance of comparison to rhetoric. 157 00:19:32,780 --> 00:19:40,610 The Latterman comparator also means to place together to couple to unite, to treat as equal. 158 00:19:40,610 --> 00:19:47,960 By contrast, the modern Greek for the term comparison cleaner to judge together, 159 00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:55,790 avoid the prejudgement of results, which pertains to the words both compare and contrast, 160 00:19:55,790 --> 00:20:10,340 whereas the Latin instruction c p dot in practise often invites for contrast c.f. dot often more invites open minded comparison. 161 00:20:10,340 --> 00:20:18,260 Of course, no two things are absolutely identical or absolutely different. 162 00:20:18,260 --> 00:20:25,670 They attract comparative investigation because they are found to be a metaphor in Todorov sense of the term, 163 00:20:25,670 --> 00:20:35,120 which is to say constituted by the tension of difference and resemblance, separateness and communication. 164 00:20:35,120 --> 00:20:39,380 In other words, an initial comparison of them. 165 00:20:39,380 --> 00:20:47,000 Which is necessary in order to decide whether to pursue the comparison, we'll have suggested that the comprendo are different, 166 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:56,090 which is an adjective used rhetorically to indicate that two things are more different than you had expected or more often that they are similar. 167 00:20:56,090 --> 00:21:00,830 And what we mean by that adjective is more similar than we had expected. 168 00:21:00,830 --> 00:21:06,350 The idea of an of an initial comparison preceding further comparison indicates 169 00:21:06,350 --> 00:21:12,350 another ambiguity in the word which can refer not just to a method sorry, 170 00:21:12,350 --> 00:21:20,030 a methodical process, but to the other examined impression which precedes and prompts it. 171 00:21:20,030 --> 00:21:28,130 You decide to compare Beckett to Kafka in your essay because you have already compared them. 172 00:21:28,130 --> 00:21:32,750 When comparing literary works originating in different places, 173 00:21:32,750 --> 00:21:40,760 differences between them are one of the assumed bases and one of the ends of the investigation, 174 00:21:40,760 --> 00:21:45,860 the background of divergence against which the similarities between them stand 175 00:21:45,860 --> 00:21:52,940 out and then also the finer points which stand out against those similarities. 176 00:21:52,940 --> 00:21:58,340 Description of difference in relation to an other is one aim of comparison, 177 00:21:58,340 --> 00:22:05,030 but description of difference in relation to the self isn't the very impulse to compare 178 00:22:05,030 --> 00:22:11,870 complex objects produces the attendant impulse to stabilise at least one of them, 179 00:22:11,870 --> 00:22:18,560 rather than to pay attention to the instabilities and complexities of all of them simultaneously. 180 00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:25,250 So when you do comparative work, you tend to simplify one or both objects to some extent, 181 00:22:25,250 --> 00:22:29,840 because if you spend too long comparing one, then you've lost comparative sight of the other. 182 00:22:29,840 --> 00:22:34,670 So that limits the degree of descriptive detail you can enter. 183 00:22:34,670 --> 00:22:44,320 And of course, an infinite description of the complexities of one object is to render it non comparable. 184 00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:53,110 In addition, the arts, unlike the sciences, are infrequently able to make use of quantitative units of comparison, 185 00:22:53,110 --> 00:22:55,930 although they could do so more often than they do. 186 00:22:55,930 --> 00:23:03,940 And the availability of Etext now and word searches allows for a lot more statistical analysis or much easier statistical analysis. 187 00:23:03,940 --> 00:23:10,270 But insofar as we don't use numbers, we rely, as I say, on this crude vocabulary of identity, 188 00:23:10,270 --> 00:23:19,540 opposition, equilibrium and comparatives rather crudely modified by intensifies and superlatives. 189 00:23:19,540 --> 00:23:27,610 Most comparative cadences and literary study assert either identity or difference. 190 00:23:27,610 --> 00:23:35,140 For example, both Waiting for Godot and Happy Days rely on repetition. 191 00:23:35,140 --> 00:23:41,500 In contrast to Beckert, Pinter is persistently concerned with violence. 192 00:23:41,500 --> 00:23:49,750 I haven't really made very fine discriminations there like X Y does so and so in contrast to X, Y does so-and-so. 193 00:23:49,750 --> 00:24:01,390 But that's that's the common form of comparative statements. The vague term, relatively, is used to indicate a relatively small degree of difference. 194 00:24:01,390 --> 00:24:14,440 The phrase is just as and it never is just as or more conscientiously rather as cover a range of of degrees and types of similarity, 195 00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:26,640 whereas covers a range of differences. And the descriptions I'm making at the moment are no more precise than what I am describing or little more. 196 00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:33,070 Or hardly more. Yet in inexplicitly comparative work, 197 00:24:33,070 --> 00:24:38,710 the degree of descriptive detail obtained is crucial since it determines what's 198 00:24:38,710 --> 00:24:43,660 described as a similarity and what's described as a difference in practise. 199 00:24:43,660 --> 00:24:50,770 When you increase the level of descriptive detail, you often move from a similarity to a difference. 200 00:24:50,770 --> 00:24:56,050 It's salutary, therefore, to be reminded of the flexibility of these terms, 201 00:24:56,050 --> 00:25:02,650 similarity and difference which are so which are such heavily used tools of thought 202 00:25:02,650 --> 00:25:09,920 and are supposed antonyms similarity is merely difference on a less detailed scale, 203 00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:16,810 and the choice between them can be determined in the interests of rhetoric. 204 00:25:16,810 --> 00:25:23,410 Indeed, comparisons have long been associated with not only rhetoric, but odious, 205 00:25:23,410 --> 00:25:31,390 less odious of old being comparisons and of comparison is engendered is hatred. 206 00:25:31,390 --> 00:25:46,460 Liftgate 14 30 in Shakespeare's works comparison is repeatedly characterised as quibbling, equivocation, gybing allusion and scoffing analogy. 207 00:25:46,460 --> 00:25:49,940 But if it's done conscientiously, 208 00:25:49,940 --> 00:25:59,330 one condition of a methodical comparison being considered worthy of pursuit is that the things you're concerned are in fact comparable. 209 00:25:59,330 --> 00:26:09,970 Now, why on earth do we mean by that adjective? Comparability always involves a degree of similarity in the comprendo. 210 00:26:09,970 --> 00:26:22,780 Of course, anything can be compared with anything else and comparable resembles similar and different in being a relative, not an absolute term. 211 00:26:22,780 --> 00:26:27,610 The applicability of which rests on a comparison. The same, therefore, 212 00:26:27,610 --> 00:26:40,840 is true of the term non comparable and in comparable charges of non-com probability rhetorically assert that lack of interest or tactless ness, 213 00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:47,800 unfairness or some other wrong would be involved in pursuing a comparison. 214 00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:50,800 These are statements of value. 215 00:26:50,800 --> 00:27:00,160 The assertion that any one thing rather than a combination of objects is incomparable or beyond compare implies that the 216 00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:09,310 qualities which it has in common with other things are trivial in comparison to its distinguishing characteristics, 217 00:27:09,310 --> 00:27:17,770 and that if you nonetheless went ahead with the comparison, this would involve paying insufficient attention to those characteristics, 218 00:27:17,770 --> 00:27:22,420 which would therefore render the comparison either trivial or invalid. 219 00:27:22,420 --> 00:27:29,290 The assertion you can't compare Saligari to Mozart, of course, rests on a comparison, 220 00:27:29,290 --> 00:27:36,010 and it implicitly argues that their similarities are unimportant compared to their differences, 221 00:27:36,010 --> 00:27:43,480 and that to describe either would be at best uninteresting and at worst insulting to Mozart. 222 00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:54,100 Similarly, Orsino tells Viola in Twelfth Night, make no compare between that love a woman can bear me and that I owe Olivia. 223 00:27:54,100 --> 00:28:02,770 Sometimes people describe a work of art as incomparable, not just to express admiration for it, 224 00:28:02,770 --> 00:28:07,810 but also to imply that it is in the nature of the work's excellence to determine the 225 00:28:07,810 --> 00:28:15,230 mode in which it alone should be explored and which is by far the most valuable mode, 226 00:28:15,230 --> 00:28:23,740 the only valid mode in which to explore it. That is also what's meant by claims of uniqueness. 227 00:28:23,740 --> 00:28:31,690 The most extreme version of this argument is that the work's own terms are the only terms on which it can be understood. 228 00:28:31,690 --> 00:28:43,590 The implication of this, which is rarely embraced, is that the work uses a private language in Bitcoin's sense and is therefore in incomprehensible. 229 00:28:43,590 --> 00:28:53,070 Corporatists assert both comparability and comprehensibility and the two terms are intimately linked. 230 00:28:53,070 --> 00:28:59,220 Peter Peter Sundy asserted that kind comsubpac Panopto unfertilised based, 231 00:28:59,220 --> 00:29:06,780 does behoved files, foster kinstler auditing critical wall of a failing test as an invader. 232 00:29:06,780 --> 00:29:10,590 No work of art declares that it is incomparable at most. 233 00:29:10,590 --> 00:29:18,220 It is the artist or critic who claims that. But every work of art demands that it is not compared. 234 00:29:18,220 --> 00:29:25,780 But this is clearly wrong, certain works of art clearly ask to be compared with others. 235 00:29:25,780 --> 00:29:33,460 James Joyce's Ulysses and Derek Walcott's amorous to the Odyssey of Homer, for example, 236 00:29:33,460 --> 00:29:41,860 one entity of which incomprehensibility, as well as in incompatibility is sometimes asserted is God. 237 00:29:41,860 --> 00:29:46,060 This is a claim made by several kinds of theism. 238 00:29:46,060 --> 00:29:57,190 The same compound assertion is made in order to express or advocate a sense of quazi religious or in relation to a non divine subject. 239 00:29:57,190 --> 00:30:02,500 For example, since the mid 1960s to the Holocaust, 240 00:30:02,500 --> 00:30:12,410 a bill was recently proposed to the Israeli parliament, which would outlaw comparisons to the Nazis. 241 00:30:12,410 --> 00:30:18,500 Assertions of non ability, as applied to combinations of objects, 242 00:30:18,500 --> 00:30:24,890 are often based on a sense that the way in which they're most likely to be compared will not generate valid. 243 00:30:24,890 --> 00:30:28,010 That other interesting to term results. 244 00:30:28,010 --> 00:30:40,040 Neither apples and oranges are proverbially asserted to be intrinsically incomparable, but they are asserted to be mutually non comparable, 245 00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:48,620 presumably because there are similarities of size and shape generate the risk that they will be judged according to the same criteria, 246 00:30:48,620 --> 00:30:54,650 and an orange would be unfairly criticised as being less crisp than an apple. 247 00:30:54,650 --> 00:31:02,120 In this sense, the idiom can be contrasted with chalk and cheese, which is more of a contrast. 248 00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:09,080 Haslett stated that comparisons are impertinent and lead only to the discovery of defects by making one thing, 249 00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:12,740 the standard of another, which has no relation to it. 250 00:31:12,740 --> 00:31:19,370 Similarities should therefore, of course, not be allowed to obscure the differences which affect comparability. 251 00:31:19,370 --> 00:31:33,200 This is perhaps the sense behind the perfect rhyme in the roughly equivalent Serbian proverb Peridotite Bob IGB to compare grandmothers and toads. 252 00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:42,770 The charge of incommensurable lity denies that a certain type of measure can be applied to all of the proposed comprendo. 253 00:31:42,770 --> 00:31:51,950 For example, Spanish has an idiom which disparages Sumar Para's Common, adding pears and apples. 254 00:31:51,950 --> 00:31:56,240 Of course, you anybody can count pieces of fruit, 255 00:31:56,240 --> 00:32:05,330 but the specific category of pear or apple is the proverb implies of limited interest in the Russian idiom. 256 00:32:05,330 --> 00:32:17,720 Strava need to apply. Smuts Newcome prohibits the comparison of the warm with the soft, since no single measure can be made of warmth and softness. 257 00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:22,010 Finally, certain qualities are definitely perceived by different people. 258 00:32:22,010 --> 00:32:32,300 The Hungarian have no idea how to pronounce this is LISICK is Professor Nork Taste's and Cmax suggests that the relative value of 259 00:32:32,300 --> 00:32:39,740 different objects can't be absolutely decided if they're judged on qualities which are definitely felt by different individuals. 260 00:32:39,740 --> 00:32:48,100 Rather, as two smacks in the face can't be compared if they're experienced by different people. 261 00:32:48,100 --> 00:32:54,700 It's also the case that any comparison, therefore, has to be performed by one person, 262 00:32:54,700 --> 00:33:02,740 non subjective qualities can be determined as belonging to objects by different people in a division of labour. 263 00:33:02,740 --> 00:33:08,950 And then those findings can be compared by a third person making use of their descriptions. 264 00:33:08,950 --> 00:33:14,770 But for a comparison to take place, it has to take place in one mind. 265 00:33:14,770 --> 00:33:23,620 Relative unity of physical or conceptual place assists the equally important unity of time. 266 00:33:23,620 --> 00:33:29,560 Systematic comparisons require a succession of mental movements between holes and parts in order 267 00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:36,610 to select the comprendo to decide on which quality to compare them and to actually compare them. 268 00:33:36,610 --> 00:33:41,950 But the end result of comparison is generated in an instant in which the qualities 269 00:33:41,950 --> 00:33:48,840 of different objects are simultaneously present to the composer's mind. 270 00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:53,340 I suggested that today comparison is a minority pursuit, 271 00:33:53,340 --> 00:33:58,980 but it has played an important an important part in the development of criticism as a subject, 272 00:33:58,980 --> 00:34:06,630 notably in the European tradition, there is a long tradition of comparing the Greeks to the Romans. 273 00:34:06,630 --> 00:34:09,420 And then slightly later, from the early modern period, 274 00:34:09,420 --> 00:34:18,450 the ancients to the Modern's comparison and criticism were connected more systematically in the later 19th century, 275 00:34:18,450 --> 00:34:25,380 when literary studies, particularly on the continent, were modelled on the evolving scientific disciplines. 276 00:34:25,380 --> 00:34:33,210 So little to Oveson Shaft was modelled on Nattu of Schaft, the study of Nature. 277 00:34:33,210 --> 00:34:40,260 Specifically, comparative literature was modelled on certain other subjects which had comparison in their titles, 278 00:34:40,260 --> 00:34:49,290 including comparative philology, comparative biology and comparative philosophy, science, of course, uses comparison. 279 00:34:49,290 --> 00:34:52,830 It precedes inductively through comparison. 280 00:34:52,830 --> 00:35:02,220 Experiments analyse a comparable in relation to an isolated variable and observed deviations from the second comparative or 281 00:35:02,220 --> 00:35:13,170 control comparative philology developed by observing similarities in languages which had hitherto been assumed to be unconnected, 282 00:35:13,170 --> 00:35:23,770 and then using historical information to explain the connexion or the reverse inducing historical hypotheses from the connexion. 283 00:35:23,770 --> 00:35:33,850 The results of these comparisons were sometimes explained in the dimension of time, using a tree metaphor or a tree diagram, 284 00:35:33,850 --> 00:35:41,350 indeed, tree shaped comparative ism has had considerable durability in literary study, 285 00:35:41,350 --> 00:35:53,590 where it's tended either to point to similar social conditions, generating similar literary phenomena, or to posit direct influence between phenomena. 286 00:35:53,590 --> 00:35:58,030 More recently, Franco Moratti, the Italian critic and theorist, 287 00:35:58,030 --> 00:36:04,690 has described the history of British 19th century detective fiction in evolutionary terms, 288 00:36:04,690 --> 00:36:10,510 and he shows the results of his comparisons of novels in tree diagrams which show the 289 00:36:10,510 --> 00:36:17,590 convergence and divergence over time of different subgenres of detective fiction. 290 00:36:17,590 --> 00:36:27,880 The study of influence, which has been a more strong and enduring vein of criticism than social comparison, is necessarily asymmetric. 291 00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:38,560 We're back at looking at X and Y. Alexei Wesolowski, who founded the Department of World Literature at Moscow University in 1873, 292 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:43,570 stated at the beginning of his book, The Western Influence in New Russian Literature, 293 00:36:43,570 --> 00:36:48,010 that the exchange of ideas, images, fables, 294 00:36:48,010 --> 00:36:52,750 artistic forms between the tribes and people of the civilised world is one of the 295 00:36:52,750 --> 00:36:58,780 most important things studied by the still young science of literary history. 296 00:36:58,780 --> 00:37:09,430 In 1961, Henry Rimac criticised French criticism for its emphasis on influence studies rather than comparison, in the strictest sense, 297 00:37:09,430 --> 00:37:16,810 arguing that purely comparative subjects constitute an inexhaustible reservoir hardly tapped by contemporary 298 00:37:16,810 --> 00:37:21,340 scholars who seem to have forgotten that the name of our discipline is comparative literature, 299 00:37:21,340 --> 00:37:29,650 not influential literature. Kulla argued that world literature courses that bring together the great books from around 300 00:37:29,650 --> 00:37:35,740 the world seem to base comparability on a notion of excellence so that comparison, 301 00:37:35,740 --> 00:37:43,540 rather than opening new possibilities for cultural value more often than not, restrict and totals it. 302 00:37:43,540 --> 00:37:52,450 However, courses of world and general literature, in fact, don't necessarily assert the comparability of the works they studied. 303 00:37:52,450 --> 00:38:02,630 They study. If anything, they may purport to make the principle to make this selection on the principle of non comparability. 304 00:38:02,630 --> 00:38:09,590 In the phrase comparative literature, comparative is the attribute of literature, 305 00:38:09,590 --> 00:38:18,170 yet it is almost never understood in this way because the semantic meaning of the phrase has drifted apart from the compositional meaning. 306 00:38:18,170 --> 00:38:23,720 Exactly the same is true of English and literature and Nietzsche on the LITERATURA, 307 00:38:23,720 --> 00:38:32,570 although not literature Campari in which the literature is the passive subject of comparison. 308 00:38:32,570 --> 00:38:43,010 Compared literature, Clements notes that the equivalent East Asian terms are a compound essentially of two substantives 309 00:38:43,010 --> 00:38:50,660 the Chinese pea chow when Hsueh and the Japanese Heacock born Bengochea and the Korean pig, 310 00:38:50,660 --> 00:38:57,080 your mon hak consist of comparison plus literature. 311 00:38:57,080 --> 00:39:04,070 The terms thus denote the scientific comparison of two or more literatures without the inclusion of adjectival modifiers. 312 00:39:04,070 --> 00:39:13,280 Perhaps if we followed suit and just talked about literature comparison, we might eliminate a great deal of discussion. 313 00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:15,200 On the other hand, well said. 314 00:39:15,200 --> 00:39:21,110 There's little use in deploring the grammar of the term and to insist that it should be called the comparative study of literature. 315 00:39:21,110 --> 00:39:24,530 Everybody understands the elliptical usage, 316 00:39:24,530 --> 00:39:34,580 but I would argue that the phrase comparative literature does have a potential meaning which corresponds with its compositional sense. 317 00:39:34,580 --> 00:39:46,400 That is, literature which invites the performance of internal comparison, or which, to put it another way, contains comparisons. 318 00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:55,460 This is to use the noun comparison in a sense distinct from any in which I've already used it, a process and its result. 319 00:39:55,460 --> 00:40:03,860 What I mean by a comparison of a kind that can be contained by a work is a quality or set of qualities 320 00:40:03,860 --> 00:40:10,640 which can obviously or interestingly be compared with another quality or qualities in the same work. 321 00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:17,570 And that work can't be properly understood without performing that act of comparison. 322 00:40:17,570 --> 00:40:27,860 Waiting for Godot is comparative between its first and second halves in their presentation of parallel stories of two couples, 323 00:40:27,860 --> 00:40:34,820 Daniel Deronda, which I discussed at some length last week, is comparative literature. 324 00:40:34,820 --> 00:40:41,800 This might be the most useful and grammatically cogent application of that term. 325 00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:53,530 A comparison of novels as comparative works of literature is a second-order comparison similar to the comparison of ratios. 326 00:40:53,530 --> 00:41:00,910 Now the comparison of ratios has the benefit of avoiding or confessing the variable of context. 327 00:41:00,910 --> 00:41:09,190 So, for example, to say Daniel's relationship to Gwendoline is the equivalent in Daniel Deronda of Birkins relationship to 328 00:41:09,190 --> 00:41:19,870 Gerald in Women in Love is less problematic than claiming Daniel is like Birken or Gwendoline is like Gerald. 329 00:41:19,870 --> 00:41:25,870 Of course, even internal literary comparisons involve differences of context and all 330 00:41:25,870 --> 00:41:30,670 assertions of the similarities of two of the heroines of just that one novel. 331 00:41:30,670 --> 00:41:39,460 Daniel Deronda Gwendoline and Al Carisi should be always contextualised by the two women's very different circumstances, 332 00:41:39,460 --> 00:41:44,350 their different native countries and races and musical talents. 333 00:41:44,350 --> 00:41:55,720 So even within one story in a novel, you need a similar along the lines of Gwendolyn is to her circumstances what our easy is to hers. 334 00:41:55,720 --> 00:42:03,400 So any comparison of the components of complex objects is nearly always a comparison of ratios. 335 00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:09,550 One is reminded that Rausseo is the etymological ancestor of reason. 336 00:42:09,550 --> 00:42:21,250 Comparing the comparisons of two stories of two times and and potentially two countries makes this fact particularly clear. 337 00:42:21,250 --> 00:42:29,530 Of course, the questions remain of the relationship of Daniel Deronda to women in love and of the realist to the modernist novel. 338 00:42:29,530 --> 00:42:35,320 Gwendoline and Alcaraz in the same novel are comparable in a way in which Daniel and 339 00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:41,080 Birken in two different novels aren't because they are parts of the same work of art. 340 00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:49,090 In this sense, the two levels of comparison comparisons you do within works and between them should be importantly distinguished. 341 00:42:49,090 --> 00:42:55,330 But I would say that is the crucial factor, not whether or not the two works of art are in fact of two different places. 342 00:42:55,330 --> 00:42:59,110 And in any case, why should the difference of place trump the difference of time, 343 00:42:59,110 --> 00:43:07,810 as it tends to do when using comparative literature, only to refer to difference of place and sometimes of language? 344 00:43:07,810 --> 00:43:16,120 Most comparisons have one or both of two motives to compare the veranda to do the comparison 345 00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:23,830 for its own sake and to explore the topic or topics on which they're being compared. 346 00:43:23,830 --> 00:43:30,460 If you're really interested in the topic, then you'll choose the comprendo according to the topic, 347 00:43:30,460 --> 00:43:34,210 and you won't necessarily compare them directly to each other. 348 00:43:34,210 --> 00:43:42,380 So you can look at SEXON or for a and then section author B and they needn't be brought into direct comparison. 349 00:43:42,380 --> 00:43:53,000 But complex comprendo, if you if you're basing your comparison on the desire simply to compare to objects or to authors, 350 00:43:53,000 --> 00:44:00,080 you then have the problem that they generate an infinite number of qualities on which you could compare them. 351 00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:11,540 So you can't simply say, I'm comparing this novel in that novel, you have to say I compare A and B with regard to C and D any. 352 00:44:11,540 --> 00:44:22,940 Steiner posited an access from literal translation of texts through imitation to what he called into animation of texts within a national, 353 00:44:22,940 --> 00:44:31,040 linguistic or broader cultural region. This entire animation is often what we're after. 354 00:44:31,040 --> 00:44:42,980 When we do literary comparison, it can be observed in regard to particular topics or qualities on which to work, might be said to compare notes. 355 00:44:42,980 --> 00:44:51,530 So, for example, to take Women in Love and Daniel Djuanda, you can interestingly compare those two novels with regard to the following topics. 356 00:44:51,530 --> 00:45:05,900 Love, lust, married, life, double plotting, tragedy, comedy, art, politics, intellectual ism, cosmopolitanism, God, 357 00:45:05,900 --> 00:45:20,060 children, Schopenhauer, death myths that misanthropy, satire, horses, railways, symbolism, kitsch amongst many others. 358 00:45:20,060 --> 00:45:25,160 Complex topics of comparison generate fields of comparison. 359 00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:32,150 What I mean by field is a nexus of subject matter and method methodologies within 360 00:45:32,150 --> 00:45:38,000 which the works of literature are then compared on possession of similar qualities, 361 00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:45,830 for example, or consideration of the ways in which these novels are realist or otherwise would require more precise 362 00:45:45,830 --> 00:45:54,870 comparison of the possession or lack of possession of certain qualities which constitute realism in literature. 363 00:45:54,870 --> 00:46:00,810 The concept of a topic of comparison can be replaced by any one of several metaphors, 364 00:46:00,810 --> 00:46:08,850 each of which implies a slightly different method, sometimes you'll hear talk of an axis of comparison. 365 00:46:08,850 --> 00:46:18,000 This implies a quality, according to two degree of possession, of which the comparable order can be placed on a single axis. 366 00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:23,790 A fulcrum of comparison implies a symmetric comparison. 367 00:46:23,790 --> 00:46:33,300 So the idea is that by performing comparison, you're magnifying the force of a second comparator through a lever which is resting on the system. 368 00:46:33,300 --> 00:46:38,040 Comprehensiveness, that's the thing you're comparing them in relation to, 369 00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:44,400 to lift the first object into clearer view, for example, to lift Frankenstein, 370 00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:55,410 the novel into clearer view by implying that by applying the force of paradise lost through a lever resting on the fulcrum of the fall, 371 00:46:55,410 --> 00:47:00,960 which is your Tatsumi comprehension, is the topic on which you are comparing them. 372 00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:10,620 Comparisons of quantity, for example, amount of reference to God can to some extent be distinguished from comparisons of quality, 373 00:47:10,620 --> 00:47:15,210 for example, the conception of God in two different works. 374 00:47:15,210 --> 00:47:21,630 However, this distinction between quantity and quality, which is apparently a distinction of quality, 375 00:47:21,630 --> 00:47:28,260 can also be analysed as one of quantity, as in fact a difference of degree. 376 00:47:28,260 --> 00:47:34,740 Just as differences of degree can also be expressed as differences of kind. 377 00:47:34,740 --> 00:47:45,930 Clearer is the distinction between comparisons which do and don't employ an external an external standard to the objects being compared. 378 00:47:45,930 --> 00:47:53,970 For example, Oxford and Cambridge can be compared on their distance from a third point, which is London, 379 00:47:53,970 --> 00:48:01,410 and they can then be placed on a single axis, which is that of distance in more complex comparisons. 380 00:48:01,410 --> 00:48:09,240 However, the result is more ostensively. F.R. Leavis does a lot of comparative criticism. 381 00:48:09,240 --> 00:48:14,670 He compares, for example, George Eliot in DH Lawrence on sex as follows. 382 00:48:14,670 --> 00:48:25,110 The point may be made by saying they are not only equally unlike Maupassant in their attitudes towards sex, they are unlike in the same way, 383 00:48:25,110 --> 00:48:33,000 which is like saying that Orkestar and Oxford and Bestor both lie roughly in the same direction and distance from London. 384 00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:40,980 Masaaki, who in her book Sisters in Literature, compares the relationships of sisters in Eliot's Middlemarch, 385 00:48:40,980 --> 00:48:49,770 Fosters Howards End and Lawrences women in love to those of the relations of Antigoni and is moeny in Sophocles is Antigoni. 386 00:48:49,770 --> 00:48:55,110 She uses the analogy of musical variations on a theme now. 387 00:48:55,110 --> 00:49:06,900 No conversion to a single axis is possible here, nor is it possible when you foster comparative ism by, for example, teaching a course on tragedy. 388 00:49:06,900 --> 00:49:12,240 Jolliff, who did this, said that constant reference was made both to the governing idea of the course, 389 00:49:12,240 --> 00:49:19,290 the idea of tragedy and to the substance and treatment of each of the plays compared to one another. 390 00:49:19,290 --> 00:49:29,760 So the relations of vishna will be sad. The Cherry Orchard and Beckett's Happy Days to the third point, which is the idea of tragedy. 391 00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:38,880 These results can't be placed on an axis, but both plays can be raised into view on the fulcrum of tragedy. 392 00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:45,970 Or, to use a different metaphor, they can both be viewed simultaneously from the tragic highground. 393 00:49:45,970 --> 00:49:52,600 On the other hand, comprendo can be studied in relation not to any external standard, 394 00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:58,840 but to qualities which are generated only by their very comparison. 395 00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:08,020 This can be illustrated by Anna Karenina, his reaction to her husband, Karenin, when she gets home from Moscow. 396 00:50:08,020 --> 00:50:17,020 So she has just for the first time, met Vronsky. Now she has frequent contact with many men, but none has yet made an impression on her. 397 00:50:17,020 --> 00:50:22,690 She meets Bronsky, he makes an impression. She then goes back to her husband in St. Petersburg. 398 00:50:22,690 --> 00:50:33,730 Now, she does not then compare both Karenin and Vronsky in relation to any third man or indeed any ideal standard of man. 399 00:50:33,730 --> 00:50:44,590 But she judges both men on possession of the quality attractiveness to Anna when the comparison is between Karenin and Bronsky. 400 00:50:44,590 --> 00:50:53,320 Of course, this quality has as much reference to Anna as it has to those men and critics comparing literature. 401 00:50:53,320 --> 00:51:01,570 Unlike women, comparing men should seek to exclude intrinsically personal reactions as far as possible. 402 00:51:01,570 --> 00:51:09,940 However, comparisons of complex subjects inevitably generate qualities which are peculiar to that comparison. 403 00:51:09,940 --> 00:51:18,310 In this sense, compared works of literature could be thought of as involved in a mutual process as suggested by the Russian verb. 404 00:51:18,310 --> 00:51:19,670 A different verb comparison. 405 00:51:19,670 --> 00:51:31,000 So nossiter to correspond with or compare oneself, which, unlike the other verb I mentioned, Sarraf needs exists only in the imperfective aspect. 406 00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:40,330 And so it's a process, not a finite action. When see Booth classified the questions which can be asked of a text into those 407 00:51:40,330 --> 00:51:48,370 which invites those to which it responds and those by which it is violated. 408 00:51:48,370 --> 00:51:53,590 Ideally, comparatives to bring together works which are capable of conducting with each 409 00:51:53,590 --> 00:51:59,560 other an exploratory conversation on a single topic which is worth overhearing. 410 00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:05,410 This topic is not necessarily the one about which the individual works have most to say, 411 00:52:05,410 --> 00:52:14,380 but it's necessary that the works compared find plenty about plenty to say about it once they start their discussion. 412 00:52:14,380 --> 00:52:17,920 When I'm sorry, I'm running slightly gauche. You have to. 413 00:52:17,920 --> 00:52:23,140 When comparison is insensitively performed, it veers to one of two problems. 414 00:52:23,140 --> 00:52:28,510 Exaggerating similarity and exaggerating difference flew. 415 00:52:28,510 --> 00:52:36,580 Alan does the first in his attempt to demonstrate the likeness of Macedon and Monmouth and Henry the Fifth. 416 00:52:36,580 --> 00:52:38,920 This is meant to be said, I believe in a Welsh accent. 417 00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:47,560 If you look at the maps of the world I want you shall find in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth that the situations look you is both alike. 418 00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:52,900 There was a river in Macedon and there is, moreover, a river at Monmouth. 419 00:52:52,900 --> 00:52:57,250 It is called the Y at Monmouth, but it is out of my brains. What is the name of the other river? 420 00:52:57,250 --> 00:53:04,960 But it is all. It is all one to Zuleika's. My fingers is to my fingers and there is salmons in both that phrase. 421 00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:11,680 Salmon's in both should stand as the warning against the exaggeration of similarity in comparison. 422 00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:17,560 The significance of the significance of the results of Llewellyn's comparison is on his own terms. 423 00:53:17,560 --> 00:53:24,220 Clear. The similarities between Macedon and Monmouth implies that their leaders are therefore similar, 424 00:53:24,220 --> 00:53:29,050 and that means that his king represents Alexander the first. 425 00:53:29,050 --> 00:53:34,930 So Alexander the Great. This would also mean that he has a legitimate claim to France. 426 00:53:34,930 --> 00:53:42,820 There is a point to his comparison. Literary comparatives, by contrast, sometimes face the question about their efforts. 427 00:53:42,820 --> 00:53:55,190 Cui bono. In whose good is this being done, it, given work resembles and and differs from another work in certain ways. 428 00:53:55,190 --> 00:54:00,950 So what the corporatists can respond in one or both of two ways, 429 00:54:00,950 --> 00:54:09,770 she can try to establish the reasons for those similarities and differences in terms of space or time or influence, 430 00:54:09,770 --> 00:54:15,410 or she can try to point to the results significance. 431 00:54:15,410 --> 00:54:17,750 The latter, which might be related to the reasons, 432 00:54:17,750 --> 00:54:28,700 could lie in an improved understanding of those texts or of those genres or of their authors lives overseas countries, languages and cultural modes. 433 00:54:28,700 --> 00:54:37,250 Literary comparisons worth the trouble of performing will therefore contrast to the hatter's riddle to Alice at the Tea Party in Wonderland. 434 00:54:37,250 --> 00:54:49,220 Why is a Raven like a writing desk? Neither the Hatter nor the March have the slightest idea, solutions can be found and have been found, 435 00:54:49,220 --> 00:54:56,480 Carroll himself suggested, when he was asked, because it can produce few notes, though these are very flat. 436 00:54:56,480 --> 00:55:03,800 But these solutions do not individually or collectively indicate that ravens' and writing desks are, 437 00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:12,170 in theodoros sense, metaphors that is constituted by the tension between similarities and difference. 438 00:55:12,170 --> 00:55:19,730 Nor does the discovery of solutions to Carol's famous riddle involve much interpretive risk, 439 00:55:19,730 --> 00:55:28,010 because the degree of validity and profundity of the results found is immediately obvious. 440 00:55:28,010 --> 00:55:38,760 One factor which which influences the outcome of comparison is the number of comparable to the results of comparing to objects are likely to be, 441 00:55:38,760 --> 00:55:49,760 or more likely to be conceivable of a single conceivable on a single axis of which they may involuntarily be perceived to mark out the opposite ends. 442 00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:56,540 Modern English doesn't use superlatives and less. At least three comprendo are alluded to. 443 00:55:56,540 --> 00:56:05,480 But that doesn't prevent the allusion when you're comparing two things that the thing which has more of a quality is most in possession of it. 444 00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:10,730 And we see this a lot in Shakespeare's English Taming of the Shrew. 445 00:56:10,730 --> 00:56:17,030 Not to bestow my youngest daughter before I have a husband for the elder. 446 00:56:17,030 --> 00:56:27,020 There are only two daughters. Leavis exemplifies and embraces the exaggeration to which such comparison can give rise in literary criticism. 447 00:56:27,020 --> 00:56:35,300 Quote, Lawrence sees what the needs are and understands their nature so much better than George Eliot in the comparison. 448 00:56:35,300 --> 00:56:40,110 In fact, we have to judge the George Eliot doesn't understand them at all. 449 00:56:40,110 --> 00:56:49,580 The addition of a third comprendo makes it more likely that the results will be conceived on a two dimensional field. 450 00:56:49,580 --> 00:56:57,800 An English and a Russian novel may appear less strongly representative of England and Russia, if you throw in a German, 451 00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:03,920 a Czech or an American novel with reference to the third language which used to 452 00:57:03,920 --> 00:57:07,820 be required of anyone on a comparative literature in the United States source, 453 00:57:07,820 --> 00:57:15,500 you wrote the third language like an uninvited guest points to the things that the two language pattern leaves out. 454 00:57:15,500 --> 00:57:24,380 The apex of the triangle just determined is also the point from which a new angle opens up for measurement 455 00:57:24,380 --> 00:57:29,960 flew and might have had greater difficulty in demonstrating that King Henry was a second Alexander. 456 00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:34,700 Had he involved a third point of comparison. 457 00:57:34,700 --> 00:57:42,290 Bernheimer, an American comparatives, celebrates comparison for revealing external presences within the work, 458 00:57:42,290 --> 00:57:46,340 the voice of comparative literature, he says, is unholy. 459 00:57:46,340 --> 00:57:54,080 And this very quality of dispossession, a kind of haunting by otherness, is this voice is great strength. 460 00:57:54,080 --> 00:58:00,740 David Ferris goes further in celebrating comparisons which don't generate coherent results. 461 00:58:00,740 --> 00:58:13,620 He says we compare what cannot be compared. Like any assertion of incompatibility, however, this is either a relative statement or untrue. 462 00:58:13,620 --> 00:58:20,280 I noted at the beginning that that comparison is intrinsic to thought and to willed action. 463 00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:28,110 Given this, I would argue that it's worth sharpening your skills at comparison and consciousness of comparisons, 464 00:58:28,110 --> 00:58:34,500 attractions and dangers in the intellectually challenging but practically sheltered sphere. 465 00:58:34,500 --> 00:58:44,970 That is literary criticism. Such comparative criticism cultivates sensitivity because comparison requires empirical openness 466 00:58:44,970 --> 00:58:52,260 to the precise location of the centre of gravity between separateness and communication. 467 00:58:52,260 --> 00:58:57,540 The term comparatively is related to relatively with relatively understood, 468 00:58:57,540 --> 00:59:03,960 not just in relation to relativism that isn't a necessary component of comparative thought, 469 00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:10,710 but to relationships, to the understanding of any phenomenon in its relevant contexts. 470 00:59:10,710 --> 00:59:21,480 At a political, at a social, at a moral level. The willingness to compare one thing or oneself with with another or others undermines absolutism. 471 00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:27,360 And it's an ethically sound aim of human interaction for individuals to respect their own 472 00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:35,060 and each other's quiddity whilst reaching to find maximum common ground with others. 473 00:59:35,060 --> 00:59:46,250 Moreover, ethical analysis can be assisted by comparative reference to moral benchmarks, far from inducing ethical relativism, their use forbids it, 474 00:59:46,250 --> 00:59:56,270 which is why I would say that one can compare other events to the Holocaust and it is helpful to do so since comparison is involved in all thought. 475 00:59:56,270 --> 01:00:00,800 Thought about comparison is necessarily self reflexive. 476 01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:08,930 That's one reason why the use of comparison should form part of literary theory and why comparative literature courses as they currently exist, 477 01:00:08,930 --> 01:00:14,450 although not in this university, can serve as a home for literary theory. 478 01:00:14,450 --> 01:00:19,490 The difference of degree rather than kind between similar to similarity and difference, 479 01:00:19,490 --> 01:00:26,330 the mind's tendency to look for equivalence and the limited amount of attention you can pay to 480 01:00:26,330 --> 01:00:33,780 any objects which you compare applies to comparison in its broadest sense for much comparison, 481 01:00:33,780 --> 01:00:39,980 in its narrow sense, is distinguished as much by degree as kind and is unconsciously performed in 482 01:00:39,980 --> 01:00:46,130 everything from understanding linguistic difference to reading women in love. 483 01:00:46,130 --> 01:00:51,200 In relation to all of the novels you can remember to choosing your lover. 484 01:00:51,200 --> 01:00:59,870 Thinking about comparison gives a better sense of where art fits into life, how it relates to it and how it compares to it. 485 01:00:59,870 --> 01:01:07,057 Thank you.