The XXII Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association took place at Macau University from 29 July to 2 August, 2019, with an unfortunate break of one day caused by a typhoon. Before the congress, the ICLA Executive Council met in Shenzhen in the context of International Comparative Literature Forum, co-hosted by the Chinese Comparative Literature Association and Shenzhen University. The history of ICLA congresses that happen every third year goes back to 1955. In the 20th century, only European and North-American universities hosted the event—with the exception of the 1991 congress in Tokyo. The year 2000 marked a change when Pretoria acted as host. Since then Macau is now the fourth city outside the western world to offer hospitality to the global complit community, after Hong Kong (2004), Rio de Janeiro (2007), and Seoul (2010). This fact indicates that comparative literature as a discipline has become global (having overcome the structural problems of its rightly criticized Eurocentrism), and especially the strength of the Asian complit community. The number of participants was not lower than in the previous two congresses held in two European capitals that are among the most attractive touristic destinations in the world, namely Paris and Vienna. The organizers offered the option to present papers in Chinese too, in addition to ICLA’s two official languages, English and French. The habit of inviting the local complit community to the congress and expressing how welcome they are through linguistic inclusion started with the Rio de Janeiro congress, and is a progressive trend that fits the discipline’s polyglot and global nature.
The current selection of papers based on presentations held in the Macau congress contains four thematic clusters that more or less cover the most important research directions in the current field of comparative literature. Each cluster has its own introduction by major scholars in the given field; these introductions refer to the theoretical context, the present situation of the field, and the importance of the individual contributions. In the collection “Comparative Literature” readers can find papers that make genuine comparisons. Some of these compare literary works from different cultures, some offer case studies of cultural transfers and contacts, while some reflect on the methodology of comparison. Contributors to the second cluster mostly focus on diaspora writers, who by definition live in two cultures simultaneously. Diaspora writers have been a topic of comparative literature research for a very long time, since they embody actual cultural contacts. Some papers in the second cluster, however, discuss literary phenomena that might be regarded as belonging to the realm of a national literature, but the wide comparative or theoretical context of the analysis makes the approach comparative. Translation studies, or the study of literary translations, has always already been regarded as part of comparative literature, and this fact justified the longstanding desire of the ICLA for the translation committee to be a standing research committee. Workshops on literary translation usually enjoy great popularity at ICLA congresses. In our volume, three papers represent that area. The fourth cluster “World Literature” represents an upcoming new trend in comparative literature. The two notions are sometimes regarded as opposed to each other. Simplistically put, the discipline of world literature works with translations while complit sticks to the rule of reading literature into the original. However, comparative literature necessarily takes in account all the possible concepts of world literature from an international canon (a concept which, however, seems quite outdated today) to literature having an impact outside its original context, and to the global flux of literary production. Comparatists cannot simply disregard the theoretical challenges of world literature.
The early ICLA congresses published complete proceedings in massive volumes, but this strategy became increasingly difficult as the congresses began to attract many hundreds of participants. Such huge gatherings might seem to function as a simultaneity of numerous conferences and workshops convened by individuals, research communities, or ICLA research committees; and such conferences inside the congress, which have their own organizing personnel, can easily find a way to separate publication either in book format or in a journal’s special issue. Participants might prefer publication in a thematically focused volume to what otherwise might be miscellaneous congress proceedings. In the 21st century some congress organizers renounced any publication plan while others managed to create multi-volume proceedings, which still could only contain a small fraction of the congress presentations. We proudly present a collection that occupies a position between the two extremes: a modest but representative selection that covers the topics and theoretical approaches that were mostly discussed during that intellectually fervent congress held in the unique environment of Macau.
Péter Hajdu