the unexplored richness of human literary expression
The universalist claim of the discipline called Comparative Literature (that supposedly died and was reborn in a new, less Euro-centric incarnation) has been criticised on countless occasion. This is why I feel the need of opening a new chapter in literary studies, dedicated specifically to verbal expression that is so dissimilar from our own genres that it hardly enters the focus of what is called Comparative Literature, a hegemonic discipline having its name written in capital letters.
Global literary studies is thus an area that studies the cantigas de harmonia chanted by women in Guinea Bissau in order to put an end to a quarrel. As well as the systems of versification in Mongolian poetry and the tales on sexual intercourse of humans and djinns told in Socotra. Treating them as literature in its full right, not just an ethnographic curiosity.
The question to be answered is how diverse and how similar are the forms of human literary expression, how many ways of playing with words actually exist, what is the extent of their richness and diversity. How translatable and how expressive they might be beyond the range of cultures in which they were born.
Global literary studies is thus an area that studies the cantigas de harmonia chanted by women in Guinea Bissau in order to put an end to a quarrel. As well as the systems of versification in Mongolian poetry and the tales on sexual intercourse of humans and djinns told in Socotra. Treating them as literature in its full right, not just an ethnographic curiosity.
The question to be answered is how diverse and how similar are the forms of human literary expression, how many ways of playing with words actually exist, what is the extent of their richness and diversity. How translatable and how expressive they might be beyond the range of cultures in which they were born.
