Заключение: Възраждане на дисциплината
Conclusion: Rebirth of a Discipline

Summary/Abstract: Damrosch underlines that in the beginning of 21st century there was a feeling that comparative literature had lost the sense of definition and mission that it had enjoyed during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It is described as already “defensive and beleaguered” by the mid-1970s, caught between its Eurocentric aestheticism and the very diferent approaches being developed outside the precincts of comparative literature. This attenuated institutional picture finally began to change in 1997, for an interlocking set of intellectual, institutional, and political reasons. According to the author, opening out the field, new formats of ACLA meetings and the acceleration of globalization has certainly had a major impact on this process. He emphasizes that comparatists face two nearly unsurmountable limits: the paucity of extant early literatures, and the overwhelming abundance of modern writing. Damrosch adds that they need to continue to scrutinize their practices, to reach out more effectively to colleagues beyond their programs and beyond their campuses, and to work together in ways that create synergies among disparate perspectives. The diferent strands of comparison today have long been intertwined, including philologically based close reading, literary theory, colonial/postcolonial studies, and the study of world literature. The author says that they can and should become better integrated than they have yet been, even while their practitioners maintain significant differences in archives, approaches, and perspectives.

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