Comparative Literature, world Literature and the Symptom of the Nation

Abstract

This paper follows with detail the history of the way in which comparative literature is born in France and the history of its tradition until today, especially in the United States. It intends to show that the reasons of the discipline emergence are the need to complement the model imposed by the study of literature in its strictly national context. In fact, we will show that this emergence is completely subordinated to the hegemony of those national literatures. Moreover, the article studies certain symptomatic moments in which, by getting rid of that hegemony, its object of study and methodology become more imprecise; actually, the discipline acknowledges receipt of the inconveniences brought by that amplitude. Finally, the paper argues that the way in which comparatism is articulated in the field of American cultural studies reveals a basis in determined hegemonic spaces, built in first person, that puts again at the forefront the problem of national identity.