{"id":13878,"date":"2010-07-15T00:10:56","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T04:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca\/?p=13878"},"modified":"2010-07-15T00:10:56","modified_gmt":"2010-07-15T04:10:56","slug":"centre-for-comparative-literature-letter-to-president-naylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2010\/07\/15\/centre-for-comparative-literature-letter-to-president-naylor\/","title":{"rendered":"Centre for Comparative Literature: Letter to President Naylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Here is my letter to University of Toronto president Naylor regarding the Centre for Comparative Literature<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear President Naylor,<\/p>\n

I write this on the 98th<\/sup> birthday of Canada\u2019s most famous literary scholar, Northrop Frye.\u00a0 It turns out, unfortunately, not to be a very happy birthday.\u00a0 I have just learned, with considerable shock, of the plan to abolish the Centre for Comparative Literature, founded by Frye back in 1969.\u00a0 I am writing, as an alumnus of the University of Toronto, as Frye\u2019s former research assistant, and as one of the editors of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye project published by the University of Toronto Press, to ask the University to reconsider its decision.<\/p>\n

I will always be grateful to the University for taking a chance in 1978 and admitting a student from an unknown small college in Ohio.\u00a0 Although my experience in English was completely positive, I was sometimes told by other graduate students that Comparative Literature was where the really exciting stuff was going on.\u00a0 From everything that I have read, that Centre is as vigorous and important now as it was then, yet that has not been a factor in the decision. Yes, it is good that people are not going to lose their jobs, but there will be another kind of loss, for the kind of scholarship enabled by Comparative Literature will become impossible.<\/p>\n

To non-academics, \u201ccomparative literature\u201d may seem just one more arcane, narrow specialization.\u00a0 If people do not even know what comparative literature is, it is understandable if they are not motivated to fund it.\u00a0 Comp Lit is a centrifugal approach to literary studies that reverses the centripetal approach of a traditional English department.\u00a0 What I mean is that, if you have a degree in English, your program restricts you to the literature of one language, and usually one country and historical period.\u00a0 When you go on the job market, you peddle yourself as, say, \u201ceighteenth-century British.\u201d\u00a0 The centripetal approach originated in the nineteenth century and remains valid; my own degree is in English.\u00a0 However, it is next to impossible within such a framework to study English centrifugally, in terms of its connections with other languages, literatures, and cultures.\u00a0 Yet those connections are crucial on three levels, linguistic, literary, and social.\u00a0 As Frye pointed out in an address to the Canadian Comparative Literature Association in 1974, \u201cIn English literature, the major influences have been Latin, French, and Italian:\u00a0 the influence of Old English on later developments has been minimal, as has that of medieval English apart from Chaucer.\u00a0 The most familiar schemata of English poetry, rhyme and meter, were taken over from French.\u00a0 And underlying a great deal of its fiction is a solid basis of popular literature, in folktale and ballad, which has travelled around the world without regard to linguistic barriers.\u201d\u00a0 To this we may add that when literary theory came of age in the second half of the twentieth century, there was great difficulty accommodating it in traditional English departments, because theory by definition asks general rather than specialized questions.\u00a0 Frye\u2019s own wide-ranging work was an influential example here.\u00a0 In a world that is becoming more and more interconnected, and more and more obsessed by its own interconnectedness, it seems incomprehensible that the University would seek to abolish a discipline that studies exactly those connections.<\/p>\n

I know that there are financial considerations involved.\u00a0 Fifty-five million dollars is from one point of view a lot of money.\u00a0 From another point of view, it is the bonuses of perhaps six CEOs.\u00a0 The question is what our values are.\u00a0 The University\u2019s financial crisis has been largely created from outside itself.\u00a0 We owe the global financial meltdown to people who did not<\/em> study the humanities, and who consequently made foolish and destructive decisions out of blindness.\u00a0 No, the study of literature does not necessarily lead to wisdom and sensitivity\u2014but it is one of the few things that can<\/em> enlarge our being if we are open to it.\u00a0 That was Frye\u2019s faith.\u00a0 I truly hope the University may reverse its decision and find other ways to close the budget gap.<\/p>\n

Respectfully,<\/p>\n

Michael Dolzani<\/p>\n

Professor of English<\/p>\n

Chair, English Department, Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is my letter to University of Toronto president Naylor regarding the Centre for Comparative Literature Dear President Naylor, I write this on the 98th birthday of Canada\u2019s most famous literary scholar, Northrop Frye.\u00a0 It turns out, unfortunately, not to be a very happy birthday.\u00a0 I have just learned, with considerable shock, of the plan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,52,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-centre-for-comparative-literature","category-frye-and-contemporary-scholarship","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCentre for Comparative Literature: Letter to President Naylor - 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