Comp Lit and Pieties Culler

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Comparative Literature and the PietiesAuthor(s): Jonathan CullerSource: Profession, (1986), pp. 30-32Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595387

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COMPARATIVELITERATUREAND THE PIETIESCOMPARATIVE literature snotoriouslydifficult odefine. erhaps ithas no positive identity,ut,as Ferdinandde Saussure writes in another context, "its most precisecharacteristic is to be what others are not" (162). Comparative literature, hen,would be a literary tudythat isnot linkedto thepietiesof nationalisms (literatures therepository of national genius and monument to nationalpride). Comparative literature would be most accuratelydefined as literary study that does not take a national literature as the proper unit or focus of analysis but assertsthe priority of other sorts of units or entities: literarygenres, literary periods, movements, or styles, or theoreticallydefinedproblems, suchas thereadingprocess,mimesis, or narrative technique.Such orientations not only lead to a fuller, more accurateknowledge of literature hando thevague historical schemes that inkliteraturey century o thehistoryof a nation; theywork inspecificways todemystify henationalistic uses to which literature is put. Every comparatistwill have favorite xamplesofhow knowledgeofother literatures deflates the partisan pretensions of nationalistic critics?how Spanish conceptions of the originality of Cervantes are qualified when he is read inrelation to Boccaccio and the tradition of the novella orhow theconception ofColeridge as the fountainheadofmodern criticismismodified by thedemonstration thathe got most of his ideas from unacknowledged Germans.

Obviously, comparative literature is not source studydevoted todebunking literary enius,but the ssociationof literature with national character is frequently refutedby comparatists' demonstrations that literature comesfrom other literatures.

More important, though, is theway a comparative perspective reminds critics that particular national movements are variants that have powerful and attractivealternatives. Writers themselves frequently use other literatures to challenge the assumed preeminence of particular schools in their own cultures: Stendhal's Racine etShakespeare cites theEnglish example to deflate thepretensions of the classical French theater;T. S. Eliotchampions theFrench symbolists tooppose theclaimsof the native nineteenth-century tradition of verse, asother twentieth-centurynglish poetshave drawnon thehaiku and theChinese writtencharacterto suggestthatthe literary alues linkedwith a particularnative tradition should not be taken forgranted.One might think,for example, of how knowledge of contemporary Latin

American fiction alters one's view of the achievement ofthe postwar American novel.

I dare say that what led many of us into comparativeliterature in the first place was our resentment of narrownationalisms, which found in the literature of one coun

Jonathan Cullertry the acme of value. Comparative literature, with itsbroader vision, exercises a critical demystificatory forceon the cultural pieties of a nation.

Recently, comparative literature has enlarged its critical scope inways that identify and expose Eurocentric pieties about the nature of "man." The study of women'swriting reveals thecontingency nd partialityof dominantmale traditions. he inclusionofblack literature?black women's writing, for example?in discussions ofthe novel complicates our association of the novel withthe riseof the uropean bourgeoisie and the ssumptionthat the European novel's ways of posing questions aboutthe insertion of subjects in social experience are the necessaryand crucial ones. ThirdWorld writing helps situateEuropean writings in a larger spectrum of possibilitiesand impels more perspicacious readings of Europeanideologies. Works such as Edward Said's Orientalism havehelped identify orms f cultural racismatwork inourreadings of other cultures and our definition of aWestern tradition.The Orient ineighteenth-centurynglishor French literature is a classic comparative subject, butnow comparative literature involves the study of theproductionof "theOrient" and theroleof that onstruction in the construction of Western culture.

Comparative literature, then, directs critical force at pieties or complacencies based on exclusions of other texts,other discourses, other peoples. But there is one area inwhich ithas conspicuously failedto live p to its nlightenment heritage, one area inwhich critique has been silenced. The complicity of comparative literature withreligion in our own day is a subject that has scarcely beenbroached but that cries out for attention, not least because religion provides an ideological legitimation formany reactionary or repressive forces inAmerica todayand thus is arguably a greater danger than the ideological positions comparatists do spend their time attacking.The complicityof literary tudywith religion takesdifferent forms, not all of them compatible. Note, for instance, that what Northrop Frye's poetics and the NewCritics' quite different interpretive program share is a respect for religious discourse. Anatomy of Criticism promotes the idea that comparative literature shouldinterpret literature in the framework of a basically Chris

The author isClass of 1916Professor ofEnglish and ComparativeLiterature at Cornell University.

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tian mythology?a symbolic order structured by oppositions erived from eligious iscourse.TheNew Critics,while insisting n the distinctionbetween the languageof literature and the language of science, frequently citetheparadoxes of religiousdiscourse inarguing that thelanguage of poetry is the language of paradox. In theclassroom, even critics who do not explicitly identify"Tradition"withChristian values blithely xplicate literary works in religious terms and assume that any critiqueof religionwould be inbad taste. tudentsare taughtnottoquestion thereligiousprinciplesor values adduced inliterary interpretation (to argue about religion is immature). Recently, there has been a striking revival of interestin the sacred. Instead of leading the critique of superstition, comparative literature is contributing to the legitimation of religious discourse. Geoffrey Hartman, one oftheleadersof themovement to link iterarynd religiousstudies, has even suggested that literature departmentsshould be rechristened "Departments of Mystery

Management"?perhaps inspired by the fund-raising successes of Schools of Management.It is, on reflection, somewhat surprising that departments of comparative literature these days contain people with all manner of views?Marxists, Lacanians,deconstructionists, feminists?but seldom anyone whoactively attacks religion. Comparatists pride themselveson their uestioning of orthodoxies and ideologies, butthey characteristically hesitate to produce even the mildest critique of religion, with a curious result. Our studentsare not much shocked by nihilistic texts of our century?critiques of meaning and value do not surprise them?but they an be profoundlyshockedbya good, vigorouseighteenth- or nineteenth-century attack on religion. Theyhavenotheard anything ikethisfromtheirmost radicalprofessors. Moreover, a striking feature of their cultureis the absence of current or public antireligious discourse,public critiqueof religion,or even a vigorous traditionof antireligious satire to keep the sanctimonious in check.Yet the critique of religion is, I submit, the proudestheritage of comparative literary studies and perhaps theone region inwhich the comparative perspective and literary criticism demonstrably had a major effect on thethought and discourse ofWestern culture. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, one might say withoutgreatly versimplifying,rotestants took theBible to betheword ofGod; by thebeginningof thetwentieth entury this belief was untenable in intellectual circles.Responsible forthis hangewas thescholars' and critics'insistence that techniquesof textualand criticalanalysisdeveloped forclassical literature e applied tobiblicalwritings.Both the lower nd highercriticism textualcriticism and historical criticism) were based on a comparativeprinciple,that ld andNew Testamentwritingsshould be analyzed in the same way as other ancient texts.

The discovery thatbiblicalwritingsconsisted of textualstrata from different periods undermined, for example,theassumption thatMoses had been theauthor of the

Pentateuch. Lowth's De sacra poesi Hebraeorum showedthat theprophetic books were poetical and should beregarded as literary expression. Eichorn treated the Biblenot just as literature ut as oriental literature,dentifying ifferent trands romdifferenteriods.Bultmann derived from his literaryanalysis of New Testament

materials and sources the conclusion that only the sayings of Jesus are historical: the tales, along with theframework fGospel history, re a product of themissionaryneeds of earlyHellenistic Christianity.Radicalskepticism, ithas been suggested, is a characteristic result of the literary riticismof theGospels.I fear we are in the process of losing this proud heritage of comparative and literary research. Comparativeliterature in our own day grows pious and works to legitimate rather than criticize and situate religious discourse.Most teachers of literature, dare say,do thework oflegitimation uite unknowingly, xplicating literaturenreligious terms without adopting a critical stance. We mayregard religion as a curious, irrelevant survival, all thewhile honoring theFryes,Hartmans, Blooms, Booths,and Kenners?our most famous critics?who are in theirdifferent ays promotersof religion.I am not objectingto their particular and different approaches to literatureso much as noting that their work confers a legitimacyon religion hat ontributes o its nassailability nthesocial and political arena. They all encourage respect for,rather than critique of, religion and thus contribute to thepeculiar and ideologically dangerousAmerican notionthat religious toleration requires one not tomock, criticize, or even discuss other people's religious beliefs. Thepolitical and intellectualhealth of our nation requires,submit, that thereligious justificationsof political positions nd thusreligiousdiscourse be asmuch a subjectof debate and critique as other ideological formationsand discourses. This is a problem that particularlydeserves the attention of teachers of literature for, almostalone in universities, we are the ones who explicate anddecline to criticize religious conceptions, themes, and doctrines.

How, then, should we proceed? Doubtless in differentways, as befits our varied interests and talents. What iscrucial is that we remain alert to the relation of our teaching and writing to religious discourse and that we encourage a critical attitude. This might involve comparingChristianitywith othermythologieswhenwe teachworksimbuedwith religionormaking the sadism and sexismof religiousdiscourse an explicitobject of discussion, aswe now tend to do when teaching works containingovertly racist language or sexist themes. Perhaps whenteaching Paradise Lost we ought not to draw back fromsuggesting that this account of creation is amyth and initiating iscussion of its implications.When we debatethepolitics of criticismwe shoulddiscuss therelationofour own practices to the religious discourses abroad in ourculture, which may be farmore important than the popular question of whether deconstruction is politically

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progressive or regressive. Above all, we should work tokeep alive thecritical,demythologizingforce f contemporary theory?a force that the Geoffrey Hartmans andRene Girards are busily working to capture and divert topious ends. "Down with the priests!" is an unlikely mottofor omparative literature hesedays,butwe ought toaskwhy this isso and to turn omeofour analytical energieson our relationtoreligiousdiscourse and ideology. f thestrength of comparative literature is the broad, supranational perspective that enables it to transcend and situ

ate the pieties of nations and parties, we ought at leasttoexamine thecomplicitiesof our teaching nd criticismwith thereligious iscourse that splaying n increasinglygreater role in our political and cultural life.

WORK CITEDSaussure, Ferdinand de. Cours de linguistique ge'ne'rale. Paris:

Payot, 1967.

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Comp Lit and Pieties Culler