{"id":13791,"date":"2010-07-14T00:04:05","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T04:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=13791"},"modified":"2010-07-14T00:04:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T04:04:05","slug":"13791","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/07\/14\/13791\/","title":{"rendered":"Centre for Comparative Literature: Letter to the President"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"complitbanner\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Below is a letter I sent yesterday to University of Toronto President Naylor, with copies to both Dean Gertler and the provost, regarding the proposed closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature.
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Dear President Naylor,<\/p>\n

The discussion about the fate of comparative literature at the U of T might gain some measure of clarity from what Northrop Frye always emphasized, that cultural movements flourish when they are decentralized, unlike political and economic movements, which tend to centralize.\u00a0 When the study of culture is centralized, such as will occur if comparative literature is amalgamated into a unite\u2011and\u2011conquer proposal that brings the study of all languages and literatures together under one administrative umbrella, uniformity replaces unity and bondage supplants freedom.\u00a0 While the centralizing tendency may work in such social sciences as, say, Geography & Planning, it never works in the humanities.\u00a0 The centralizing movement erases identity. \u00a0Dean\u00a0Gertler has written about how the centralizing movement we call globalization should not trump the decentralized nation\u00ad\u2011state, which remains a key space for organized labor (\u201cLabour in ‘Lean’ Times: Geography, Scale, and National Trajectories of Workplace Change\u201d).\u00a0 \u00a0While the parallels between internationalism and an amorphous department of languages and literature, on the one hand, and local autonomy and a separate identity of comparative literature, on the other, are not exact, to pay tribute to the former in what\u00a0Gertler calls \u201clean\u201d economic times is surely short\u2011sighted.<\/p>\n

As Frye has written, \u201cto distinguish what is creative in a minority from what attempts to dominate, we have to distinguish between cultural issues, which are inherently decentralizing ones, and political and economic issues, which tend to centralization and hierarchy\u201d (\u201cNational Consciousness and Canadian Culture\u201d).<\/p>\n

This past year I was an external reviewer for a dissertation by a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature at the U of T.\u00a0 \u00a0It was an exceptional piece of work, combining a number of disciplines\u2013\u2013language, game theory, mathematics, critical theory, music, painting\u2013\u2013into a genuine contribution to humanistic learning.\u00a0 It will be a depressing state of affairs if such extraordinary and mature scholarship is no longer permitted to flourish at the U of T.\u00a0 Everyone in the field, even those of us at a distance, knows what a distinguished program Comparative Literature at the U of T is.\u00a0 To consign to the dustbin an exemplary program founded by Canada\u2019s greatest man of letters would be a travesty of the highest order, and it would cause those of us who see the U of T as a flagship university in both Canada and the rest of the world to lose faith.<\/p>\n

Yours truly,<\/p>\n

Robert Denham<\/p>\n

John P.\u00a0Fishwick Professor of English, Emeritus, Roanoke College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below is a letter I sent yesterday to University of Toronto President Naylor, with copies to both Dean Gertler and the provost, regarding the proposed closing of the Centre for Comparative Literature. 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