General Literature, Comparative Literature

One of the main dimensions of Comparative Literature is its search for methods and theoretical frameworks that have some chance of being valid in a range of periods of human history and in a variety of cultures. While universal validity may be a pipedream at worst, at best an ideal to which to aspire, there can be no doubt as to the active existence of a general «Literaturwissenschaft» dealing with problems and perspectives which are common to literatures of all cultures. As can be seen in the present volume, the commonalities serve us best when they are used as exploratory tools rather than rigidly preset truths.
The five groupings of papers: «Historical landmarks», «Myths of all times and places», «Reflections on Drama», «Aspects of Poetics», and «Before and after all, the text», share in an intensive quest for an answer to the question of what ultimately constitutes literature, underlies fictionality, motivates the aesthetic experience, in an interplay of the universal and the particular which forever defies narrow definitions.