Abstract
In her paper, "US-American Comparative Literature and the Study of East-Central European Culture and Literature," Letitia Guran begins with a short overview of the state of the discipline of comparative literature based on the ACLA Report 2003 (ACLA: American Comparative Literature Assiociation) by Haun Saussy and its responses in order to focus on a recent comparative project of large dimensions, the ICLA: International Comparative Literature Association project History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, organized and its volumes edited by Marcel Cornis Pope and John Neubauer. The thesis of Guran's paper is that there are many alternatives to the continuous -- and current -- crisis of comparative literature and that the said ICLA project provides one of such alternative. By engaging in a trans-national, multicultural, and postcolonial perspective, the first two volumes of the History present the highly diverse cultures of Central and East Europe according to decentralized, non-hierarchical categories. As a result, the History destabilizes the power-generated polarity between the hypercanon and the marginalized works and insists instead on the cooperative dimensions of those texts that supported co-habitation between various groups and cultures in the region.
Recommended Citation
Guran, Letitia.
"US-American Comparative Literature and the Study of East-Central European Culture and Literature."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
8.1
(2006):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1295>
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