Comparatism and the Crisis of Literary Studies

The article is an analysis of Rene Wellek's contribution to the theory of comparative literature. It draws on his characterization of the crisis of comparative literature presented at the 2nd Congress of ICLA in the USA, and continues with the interpretation of some of his other opinions concerning the situation in which (not only comparative) literary studies in the USA found itself at the end of the 20th century. They are included especially in his articles "The Attack on Literature" and "Destroying Literary Studies.'' Rene Wellek's theoretical opinions are analysed especially in the context of emerging cultural studies and their ideologization of literature in general, formally expressed, for example, in the Bernheimer Report for the American Association of Comparative Literature. The author points out that the future of comparative literature lies not in its use of ideological contexts but in its ability to draw attention to universal principles and values, perhaps thorough the conceptions of interliterariness and world literature, and thus overcome the harmfulness of separatist tendencies fed by particularisms of various types.