East-West Studies in the Context of Contemporary Comparative Studies

The paper is focused on comparative and interliterary research designated as East-West Studies. Such research mainly consists in the typological study of similarities and differences between regions (areas) with remote culture and poetology as well as geography. One of the major figures in the field of East-West Studies, apart from R. Etiemble and C. Guillén, is E. Miner, the American comparative scholar who devised its terminology and methodology. He regards intercultural comparative studies as an alternative project of the „world” aspect of literature, as a cultural dialogue between the West and the East (e.g. Europe and America and their communication with the Orient). In the Czech-Slovak tradition, East-West Studies have represented the relationship of the West towards the Slavonic world. Czech Slavonic scholar K. Krejčí concluded that the dialogue between the European West and the Slavonic East had been maintained through myths which, however, may have become a historical fact. The West discovered Eastern Europe (Russia) rather late, in the 18th century, while Slavonic intellectuals got acquainted with the West in person, through visits and reading books in the original. It was namely Czechs and Poles who manifested the cultural „split” between the West and the East.

ISSN: 1733-165X

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6 2 Zelenkova A. Studia East West	[pdf]	[714 KB]