Repository | Book | Chapter

Comparative Literature (CL), as an independent discipline, did not appear until the 1870s in Europe, and the situation of its rise was very complicated. It was held that Comparative Literature was introduced first by French scholars, which turned out not to be the case for the following reasons: The first monograph on Comparative Literature was not written by the French, but by an Irish scholar, Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett. The founder of the first magazine of Comparative Literature was Hugo von Meltzl de Lomnitz, a Transylvanian. Ten years later, a second journal of Comparative Literature was founded by a German. It is well recognized that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the first person in the world who proposed the concept of Comparative Literature. Meanwhile, scholars in Russia, Britain, Italy, and other European countries all had their own contributions on the development of Comparative Literature. Therefore, the complication of the beginning of the discipline deserves careful examination, which will be done in the rest of this chapter.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-34277-6_1

Full citation: