关键词: 平行研究, 类比, 翻译和流通研究, 世界文学体系

Abstract: This essay provides a new approach to outlining the methodological history of comparative literature as a discipline. It starts with a genealogy of the idea of “analogy” (αναλογια) from Aristotle to Herder, who harbingers modern notions of cultural pluralism. The conceptual history of “analogy” can be seen as a continuous intellectual project to locate grounds of comparison among different words and ideas. This project, however, proves untenable, as analogies constantly disintegrate into loose associations, as Herder pointed out early on. The essay then points out that the two primary branches of comparative studies, transcultural comparison and translation studies, are both responses to the insoluble crisis of analogy. The interactions between these two aspects of comparative literature have started to generate new conceptions of world literary systems.

Key words: comparative studies of parallel literary traditions, analogy, studies of translation and circulation, world literature systems