A New Direction in the Studies of Comparative Literature

Abstract

Comparative literature is the comparison of literary works with other literary works or the comparison of literary works with other forms of human expression. The definition comes from two schools of comparative literature, the French school and the American school. The French school is also called influence studies, while the American school is called parallel studies or comparative art studies. Many scholars of comparative literature consider the American school to be a development of the French school. Both schools aim to find homogeneity of the objects being compared. However, over time, a new school of thought emerged, named the Chinese school. This school focuses on the variation or heterogeneity contained in literary works and developed in Asia, including Indonesia. This paper aims to explore the existing theories of comparative literature in Indonesia. The results are expected to explain the Chinese school of thought, which is based on variation theory and cross-civilization studies. Furthermore, the paper gives an example of the application of the Chinese school of comparative studies to Indonesian literature.