Shunqing Cao The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature Shunqing Cao The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature Shunqing Cao School of Chinese Language and Literature Beijing Normal University College of Literature and Journalism Sichuan University China ISBN 978-3-642-34276-9 ISBN 978-3-642-34277-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-34277-6 Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956634 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 T his work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword Without the Western world being aware of it, the comparative study of literature has been fl ourishing in China for several decades. In 1985 the fi rst Congress of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association in Shenzhen was a major event in this development. As newly elected President of the International Comparative Literature Association, I attended the Congress and saw the energy and high expectations in the eyes of the young participants. However, even before that inaugural Congress, the international study of literature was practiced by outstanding scholars such as Qian Zhongshu and Yang Zhouhan, both notable for their impeccable knowledge of English and European traditions as well as the history of Chinese literature and philosophy. Another name to mention here is Yue Daiyun, of Beijing University, who has been a powerful organizer of congresses and symposia. A generation of highly gifted younger scholars has kept the fl ame of comparative studies burning with their journals, both in Chinese and English, and with conferences and local associations—among them Shunqing Cao, Xie Tianzhen, Wang Ning, Zhang Longxi, and many others. A s said, all these activities are virtually unknown outside China. Therefore, Professor Shunqing Cao’s book on The Variation Theory of Comparative Literature, appearing now in English, is a welcome attempt to break through the linguistic barrier that keeps most comparatists in China enclosed within their own cultural domain. Cao’s book aims to open a dialogue with scholars abroad, in Europe and North and South America, India, Russia, South Africa, and the Arab world. (The world is already a multipolar system longer than most of us have realized.) It would be a gross mistake not to take up the challenge of Cao’s erudite exposition. Shunqing Cao’s argument contains many pertinent observations and, where we have reason to disagree, we must express our own views so as to continue the discussion. The Variation Theory is an answer to the one-sided emphasis on infl uence studies by the former “French school” as well as to the American focus on aesthetic interpretation, inspired by New Criticism, which regrettably ignored literature in non-European languages. Our Chinese colleagues are right in seeing the restrictions of former comparative studies and are fully entitled to amend these defi ciencies. v vi Foreword However, it is important to view the rise and interaction of the various schools which Cao describes in their historical context. Much of the misunderstanding between the French and the Americans was during the years of World War II, when intellectual communication across the Atlantic Ocean was virtually impossible. The fate of Russian formalism in the 1920s was determined by political persecution and suppression, and its valuable results were almost lost, also because few international scholars were able to read Russian in the original. Thanks to Roman Jakobson, who managed to fl ee from the Soviet Union to Czechoslovakia, where he met the structuralist Jan Mukarovský and the comparatist René Wellek, and later escaped Nazi persecution by settling in the United States, the legacy of Russian formalism was saved from oblivion. At present it is German translations of the work of the Russian Formalists which most accurately, sometimes in bilingual editions, preserve the main ideas of Shklovsky, Eikhenbaum, Tynyanov, Jakobson, and others, without which a modern study of literature seems impossible. To judge the traveling of theories, knowledge of German, next to French and English, is indispensable, as Qian Zhongshu already asserted when I visited him in 1980. And now, at the suggestion of René Étiemble, European students of Comparative Literature are advised to study also at least one non-European language. The burden of comparatists has become heavy indeed…on the other hand, knowledge of various languages is an enormous enrichment as it opens the world of other cultures and is a major component of cultural consumption which, according to the French-Libanese writer Amin Maalouf, must gradually replace the obsession with material consumption, if our world’s resources are not to be exhausted within a foreseeable future and life on earth is to be preserved. R eturning to Variation Theory, precisely those scholars who acquired knowledge of languages outside their own cultural domain seem to have applied it, focusing on difference as well as similarity, on crossing cultural boundaries as well as the potential aesthetic experience. Shunqing Cao’s characterizations of the “French school” and of American Comparative Literature studies may strike us as quick abstractions from a complex reality. In fact, there were also excellent cross-cultural studies, such as those by the American Japanologist Earl Miner or by the Chinese James J. Y. Liu teaching in the United States, by the Japanese Yoshikawa Kojiro on Song poetry, or by the American sinologist Stephen Owen on Tang poetry. They all discuss phenomena of both homogeneity and heterogeneity, of sameness and difference, and they had a keen eye for the Variation which Shunqing Cao provides with a theoretical framework. Shunqing Cao and his team in Sichuan University do not claim to have solved the foundational problems of Comparative Literature. The Variation Theory recognizes sameness as well as differences, but how to identify sameness? Cao rightly assumes that the aesthetic experience is a constant factor in cross-cultural literary studies, but it may be necessary to be more specifi c about the aesthetic response to texts. Literariness—or l iteraturnost , a term fi rst used by the Russian Formalists—is not an exclusively textual phenomenon but results from a transaction (Rosenblatt) between a given text and a rather unpredictable reader. The quality of the text is an important but not decisive factor in this process. We know on the basis of empirical research Foreword vii that certain texts are more likely to trigger a literary or aesthetic response among particular readers than other texts, but the aesthetic response remains a fragile and volatile thing that differs from individual to individual and is even inconstant in the cognitive and emotional reaction of one particular individual: a text I fi nd beautiful today may pale when I reread it tomorrow. There are two scholars who in recent years have substantially contributed to the study of the aesthetic production and reception of literature. One is Yury Lotman, the Russian semiotician who introduced the distinction between the aesthetics of identity and the aesthetics of opposition. Thus he could include oral literature, which aims at recognition and identifi cation, into his argument. Focusing on textual properties rather than readers’ or listeners’ reactions, Lotman did of course not solve all problems of aesthetics. Another step forward was made by the German scholar Siegfried J. Schmidt who introduced the notion of the aesthetic convention. With some minor amendments and specifi cations, I discussed the concept of the aesthetic convention in K nowledge and Commitment: A Problem-Oriented Approach to Literary Studies (2000, coauthored with Elrud Ibsch), and I will not repeat that argument here. Suffi ce it to say that a convention is a rather loose social agreement to solve a coordination problem. Individuals are free to join the aesthetic convention to interpret a particular text as literature: the aesthetic intention of a writer can be recognized and endorsed by the recipients, but it can also be ignored, as we know, for instance, from the case of political authorities who deliberately ignored the fi ctional nature of a text and interpreted the words spoken by a character as if they expressed the opinion of the author. Although I assume that all major cultures, at least those with a script, have some space for the aesthetic convention, many of them have known episodes during which the aesthetic reading of texts stood under pressure from a religion or other dominant worldview. The aesthetic response to texts has also remained beyond most people with little education or those taken up by the dire struggle for life, such as migrant workers or peasants living in extreme poverty. The aesthetic response to particular texts is something that is taught and can be learned in school or from family and friends. Together with other readers, we may agree that certain texts are more worthwhile than others because they allow for an aesthetic reading; thus, we are in fact enacting the aesthetic convention. However, as mentioned, the potential aesthetic response can also be forfeited. In the latter case, a precious aspect of cultural communication is lost. R ather optimistically, the Variation Theory argues that we may discover literari- ness in texts of a different culture. This appears a valid assumption, confi rmed by our own reading experience. My advice is to try to understand Professor Cao’s Variation Theory; try to apply it; and, if you believe that it does not work, publish your doubts or contact Professor Cao so that the cross-cultural dialogue he is hoping for will materialize. Utrecht, The Netherlands Douwe Fokkema Acknowledgments This book is my fi rst academic work written in English. It is one of the major milestones of my career. I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this book. My deepest gratitude goes fi rst and foremost to Professor Douwe W. Fokkema, the ex-president of the International Comparative Literature Society and the distinguished professor of Utrecht University, for his continuous support to Chinese Comparative Literature and my study. He wrote the foreword of this book for me and introduced it to the interna- tional circles earnestly. I hope this book could comfort his soul and remind us of his great support for he has passed away before it is published. I also own my sincere gratitude to my Ph.D. candidates in Sichuan University and Beijing Normal University in China who helped me a lot in my preparing for and writing the book. They are Jin Yizeng, Zhang Yu, Wang Lei, Xu Yadong, Qiu Lan, Wang Chao, Li Weirong, Yan Qing, Kong Xuyou, Qiu Mingfeng, Gong Xiaobing, Wang Qing, Cui Haiyan, Xu Yangshang, Wang Pengfei, Ren Xiaojuan, Chen Pi, Wu Lin, Fu Pinjing, Li Dan, Li Yan, Cai Jun, and Zhou Yunfang. I also own a special debt to Wang Lei, Zheng Che, Shi Song, Wan Yi, and Wu Liwen, together with Lin He, Li Quan, Zhang Zhanjun, Qin Ling, Du Ping, Zhuang Peina, and John Ronald Clark from University of Science and Technology Liaoning who have spent much time on translating and editing, and to Aaron Lee Moore of Sichuan University who helped edit the fi nal draft of this book. I should fi nally like to express my gratitude to the National Social Science Foundation for its support all through these years. Beijing, China Shunqing Cao November 15, 2012 ix