China and the West: Methodologies for Comparison

When it comes to methodologies of comparison between China and the West, it is difficult to recall many meaningful discussions based on the conventional, by now largely obsolete, textbook formula of “influence studies” and “parallel studies” as stock “methods” in comparative literature as an academic discipline.1 To compare, say, landscape poetry or female protagonists in Chinese and European literary traditions almost invariably leads to something too capricious or too general. Such studies often result in mere explanations, even descriptions, of cultural features or aesthetic distinctions standing outside the space of critical interpretation.