1. ASSIGNMENT OF: COMPARATIVE LITERAURE
ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED TO: MAM RUBIA
TOPIC: Comparative literature study in non western world stresses the politicization
of literature and rejects the formalist approach
ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED BY: FATIMA GUL
ROLL NO: 1383 MA F11
DATE: 13May, 2013

2. Comparative literature is the study of literature and other cultural expressions across
linguistic and cultural boundaries. Comparative literature postulates a unity in man’s social and
historical development. Since similar social relations have existed among different peoples,
historical and typological analogies may be observed in the development of different literatures
during a single historical epoch. Comparative literature may therefore study single literary
works, literary genres and styles, the work of individual writers, or literary trends.
The aim of comparative literature is to bridge gap between different nations, civilizations
by comparing their literature. According to C.S Lewis, literature adds to reality, it does not
simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and
provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
The beauty of Literature unfolds its wings when you discover that your longings are
universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone, you belong is narrated by F.
Scott Fitzgerald. But the dilemma is that western world in general politicizes the literature of
non western world and presents its false reputation. This idea comes in to lime light when non
western writers actually realized the situation and start writing about their own culture.
The formalist approach to literature was developed at the beginning of the 20th century
and remained the primary approach to literary study until the 1970s, when other literary theories
began to gain popularity. As the name suggests, formalism is concerned primarily with form.
Rather than interpreting what a text means, the formalist analyzes how that that meaning is
communicated. A critical approach that analyzes, interprets, or evaluates the inherent features of
a text. These features include not only grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as
meter and tropes.
Edward Said his book „Orientalism‟ gave many words like „essentialism‟, „Euro
centrism‟, „Orientalist discourse‟, the „us-them dichotomy‟ he was one of the earliest writers
to have drawn attention to the systematic nature of the western way of talking about the Orient.
He has highlighted the politization of non western countries in many of his works which proves
the idea of discreetness by western people.

3. Countries like Africa which come under the map of non western world unluckily, also
suffers from this politicization. Although Africa in itself is very rich and bears multidimensional
civilization but unfortunately West invaded them on the name of civilization and always presents
their barbaric side to universe throughout the history. Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall
Apart has described about the beauty of land and its people. He has also portrayed the side of
picture which is painted by the brutality of west colonizers. “The white man is very clever. He
came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and
allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one.
He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
One review in the magazine Black Orpheus said: "The book as a whole creates for the
reader such a vivid picture of Ibo life that the plot and characters are little more than
symbols representing a way of life lost irrevocably within living memory.”
Completely rejecting the formalist approach that what is the beauty hinting through the words of
nonwestern literature, completely fail to acknowledge the thoughts, ideas, philosophies and
themes ,west certainly prove their own uncivilized behavior .
Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth suggests “Colonialism hardly ever exploits the
whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natural resources, which it
extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing
certain sectors of the colony to become relatively rich. But the rest of the colony follows its
path of under-development and poverty, or at all events sinks into it more deeply.”
Non western culture unfortunately suffers from the politicization not just collectively but
also at the individual level. V.S Naipaul when met the two brave girls in Malaysia, who were
covering themselves commented that “veil is an aggression” for people doing it. So we see that
non western even at individual is not safe from the piercing comments of west.
In Literature Lost, John Ellis, subjects the widely held assumptions and fundamental
arguments of this politicized view of literature to rigorous logical analysis. The result is a
systematic discrediting of many of the broad notions that underlay race-class-gender criticism
(now often called "cultural studies"). A defender of literary theory as it was once practiced in the
1930s, 40s and 50s, Ellis argues that what now passes for "theory" is a "degraded and corrupt

4. shadow of what theory should be", often marred by logical inconsistency, reductivism,
ahistoricism, and herd-think. As if this were not bad enough, the politicization of literary studies,
and now of other areas of the humanities, is having, according to Ellis, a harmful effect on
academic culture, undermining respect for, and intellectual commitment to, knowledge,
common-sense, rational thought, scholarly integrity, and collegial debate.
The "progressive" political bias so obvious, according to Ellis, is an expression of a deep
hostility to Western civilization. Ironically, this hostility is itself an old tradition in the West.
Periodically, "alienated insiders," usually intellectuals and writers have turned on the very
civilization that nurtures and rewards them .Their animus, Ellis suggests, is the result of anger
and frustration over the flaws, inconsistencies, and retrogressions of their culture. Although these
flaws and inconsistencies exist in every society, they provoke a more angry response in the West
because this civilization promises so much, and its failure to fulfill this promise seems all the
more unforgivable. At some point, anger about the "establishment," or "patriarchal
oppression," or "racism" spins out of control and puts an end to clear thinking. At this point,
these alienated (or adversarial) intellectuals, disillusioned and bittered, are unable to recognize
let alone value the greatest achievements of their civilization. They rivet on whatever seems
negative. To point out to them just how much progress Western civilization has made, and how
enlightened it is when compared with other cultures on the planet, "simply angers" them, for
they know "that the core of Western society is rotten, however rosy its surface appearance".
Ironically, when critics condemn Western civilization for its misdeeds, hypocrisies, and
failures, they do so, Ellis observes, with values and concepts derived directly from Western
civilization ("racism" and "human rights" make no sense unless one accepts Enlightenment
ideas about our common humanity). "To demand an end to racism and sexism is not to reject
Western society but, on the contrary, to ally oneself with certain Western values". It was the
Western tradition, and especially the European Enlightenment (irrefutably the work of dead
white males) that "socially constructed" those liberating ideas of individual liberty, political
democracy, the rule of law, human rights, gender equality, and cultural freedom that constitute
the precious legacy to which most of the world aspires .On this point Ellis quotes the forceful
words of Arthur Schlesinger from The Disuniting of America:

5. These are European ideas, not Asian, not African.... There is surely no reason for Western
civilization to have guilt trips laid on it by champions of cultures based on despotism,
superstition, tribalism, and fanaticism.... The West needs no lectures on the superior virtue of
those 'sun people' who sustained slavery until Western imperialism abolished it...who still keep
women in subjection and cut off their clitorises, who carry out racial persecutions not only
against Indians and other Asians but also against fellow Africans from the wrong tribes...and
who in their tyrannies and massacres, their Idi Amins and Boukassas, have stamped with
utmost brutality on human rights.1
1
http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr1998/ellis.html