The Possibilities of Microcomparative Research

Abstract

Recent critical tendencies in comparatistic in the works of David Damrosch, Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova and others are strongly linked with the concept of Goethe’s Weltliteratur. Through a process of reduction, selection and ideological globalization, the marginalized literatures of small groups and minorities became extra-canonical. The authors of such texts can only rise to the status of “world literature” after being translated into a world language, which is, in most cases, English. This is also true for the national literatures of smaller nations: from a global perspective, the literature of small nations – with special regard to that of the 19th century – remains either invisible or is labelled, due to the lack of proper terminology, nationalist and as such, seems of less interest. This article explores the intercultural connections in the works of a Romanian (Ioan Slavici), a Hungarian (János Arany), and a Serbian (Jovan Jovanović Zmaj) author, and by mapping the ethnic relationships during the 19th century in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy it shows the possibility and necessity of a Central-European and Balkan microcomparative research method based on a thorough knowledge of Romanian, Hungarian and Serbian language and culture. The analysis of the above-mentioned texts shows that the ethnopragmatical, ethnopolitical, ethnocultural and ethnomedial discourses introduced in this essay are capable to distinguish pragmatical, political, cultural, sociological and biographical aspects; however, these discourses can also be combined. Such analyses can best help the introspection into nationalistic texts instead of excluding them. The terminology pertaining to various ways of belonging to a nation as well as that of “nationalism” needs to be more exactly defined.