UGC NET Comparative Literature Syllabus 2025-26 — Complete Unit-wise Guide

Comparative Literature is the academic study of literature across linguistic, cultural, and national boundaries. It combines literary theory, translation studies, world literature, and cultural criticism. This guide provides a comprehensive unit-wise breakdown of the 2025–26 NTA syllabus.

Exam Pattern

Unit 1: Definition, History, and Scope of Comparative Literature

• Definition: Matthew Arnold — comparing as basis of criticism; René Wellek and Austin Warren (Theory of Literature, 1949) — distinction between general, comparative, and national literature; Wellek's critique of French school; Susan Bassnett — comparative literature as translation studies in disguise.
• French School (Historical): Fernand Baldensperger; Paul Van Tieghem; Jean-Marie Carré; Paul Hazard — influence, reception, intermediaries; rigorously historical; limited to Western Europe.
• American School: René Wellek and René Etiemble — opened to non-European literatures; thematic and generic comparisons; "intrinsic" literary values; break from positivist influence studies.
• Indian Contributions: Sisir Kumar Das; Amiya Dev; A.K. Ramanujan; Meenakshi Mukherjee; multilingual Indian literary tradition as a natural comparative arena; "comparative Indian literature" as distinct practice; Indian Comparative Literature Association (ICLA).
• Institutionalisation: International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA, 1955); American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA); AILC; journals (Comparative Literature, Oregon; New Literary History).

Unit 2: Schools and Methods in Comparative Literature

• Influence Studies: Source-influence-reception triad; intermediaries (translators, travellers, exiles); Michael Baxandall — influence as "dialogue"; genetic intertextuality.
• Thematic Studies (Thematology): Tracing motifs, types, themes across literatures; Faust theme; Don Juan; Prometheus; Romeo-Juliet type; wandering Jew; trickster across cultures.
• Genre Studies: Cross-cultural genre comparison — novel, lyric, epic, drama; Mikhail Bakhtin — the novel as dialogic form, chronotope, heteroglossia, carnival; generic transformation across cultures (haiku in Hindi, sonnet in Urdu).
• Imagology: Study of national images and stereotypes in literature; Hugo Dyserinck; Daniel-Henri Pageaux; auto-image vs. hetero-image; Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978) as imagological critique.
• Periodology: Mapping literary periods across cultures — Renaissance, Romanticism, Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism; Wellek's "periods as regulative concepts."
• Digital Humanities and Distant Reading: Franco Moretti (Graphs, Maps, Trees, 2005; Distant Reading, 2013) — quantitative analysis of world literature; computational comparative literature.

Unit 3: Literary Theory and Its Application

• Formalism and New Criticism: Russian Formalism (Shklovsky — defamiliarisation/ostranenie; Jakobson — poetic function, dominant); New Criticism (Brooks, Wimsatt — close reading, intentional/affective fallacy, well-wrought urn).
• Structuralism: Saussure (langue/parole, signifier/signified, arbitrary sign); Lévi-Strauss (myth as system of binary oppositions); Jakobson and Halle (metaphor/metonymy); Barthes (Mythologies, 1957; S/Z, 1970 — readerly vs. writerly text; death of the author).
• Post-structuralism/Deconstruction: Derrida — différance, trace, supplement, logocentrism, Of Grammatology; Paul de Man — rhetoric and reading; deconstruction applied to literary texts.
• Psychoanalytic Criticism: Freud — Oedipus complex, wish-fulfilment, the uncanny (Das Unheimliche); Lacan — mirror stage, the Other, Symbolic/Imaginary/Real; Harold Bloom — anxiety of influence (oedipal literary genealogy).
• Hermeneutics: Schleiermacher; Dilthey (Verstehen); Heidegger (Being and Time); Gadamer — hermeneutic circle, fusion of horizons; Ricoeur — conflict of interpretations, narrative time.
• Feminism and Gender: Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex); Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own); Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (The Madwoman in the Attic); écriture féminine (Hélène Cixous); Judith Butler — gender performativity; queer theory.
• Marxist Criticism: Base/superstructure; Lukács — realism and historical novel; Adorno and Horkheimer — culture industry; Althusser — ISAs, interpellation; Jameson (The Political Unconscious) — always historicise.

Unit 4: Translation Studies

• Theoretical Foundations: Eugene Nida — formal vs. dynamic equivalence; J.C. Catford — linguistic approach; Theo Hermans (Manipulation School — Even-Zohar's polysystem theory); Lawrence Venuti — foreignisation vs. domestication; Antoine Berman — translation as trial of the foreign.
• Cultural Turn: Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere — translation as cultural rewriting; patronage, ideology, poetics; refraction.
• Translation and Power: Colonial translation; Tejaswini Niranjana — situating translation (India); Gayatri Spivak — translator's politics; "The Politics of Translation."
• Indian Translation Tradition: Valmiki's Ramayana translated into 300 languages; Panchatantra translations; Persian translations under Akbar (Mahabharata as Razmnamah); colonial translations (William Jones, Max Müller, Winternitz); post-independence translation policy (Sahitya Akademi, National Book Trust); A.K. Ramanujan's translations of Sangam poetry and Kabir.
• Machine Translation and NLP: Google Translate; DeepL; neural MT; MT for Indian languages (iTranslate); challenges of non-standard languages and dialects.

Unit 5: World Literature

• Concept: Goethe's Weltliteratur (1827) — literature beyond national boundaries; Marx and Engels (Communist Manifesto) — "world literature" from cosmopolitan capitalism; David Damrosch (What Is World Literature?, 2003) — world literature as "elliptical refraction"; Pascale Casanova (The World Republic of Letters) — literary centre (Paris) vs. periphery.
• Canon Formation: Harold Bloom (The Western Canon, 1994); challenge to the canon (feminist, postcolonial, multicultural); "opening the canon" — African, Latin American, Asian texts; Nobel Prize and global literary prestige.
• Non-Western Literary Traditions: Chinese literature (Tang poetry, Dream of the Red Chamber); Japanese (Haiku, Genji monogatari — first novel); Arabic (One Thousand and One Nights, Al-Mutanabbi); Persian (Rumi, Hafiz, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh); African literature (Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka).
• Postcolonial Literature: Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth); Homi Bhabha — mimicry, hybridity, third space; postcolonial novel (Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie); writing in the coloniser's language vs. vernacular (Ngugi's shift to Gikuyu).

Unit 6: Indian Literary Traditions in Comparative Perspective

• Sanskrit Poetics: Rasa theory (Bharata, Abhinavagupta) — nine rasas; Dhvani (suggestion — Anandavardhana); Rīti (style — Vāmana); Vakrokti (oblique expression — Kuntaka); Alaṃkāra (figures of speech — Dandin); Aucitya (propriety — Kṣemendra).
• Tamil Poetics: Tolkāppiyam (c. 3rd c. BCE–3rd c. CE) — oldest extant Tamil grammar; akaṃ (interior — love poetry, 5 tinai or landscape zones) and puṟaṃ (exterior — heroic poetry); Kuṟuntokai, Ainkurunūṟu.
• Bhakti Poetics: Devotional aesthetics; ugra bhakti vs. saumya bhakti; vipralambha (viraha); shabda-brahman; Kabir's ulṭabāṃsī (upside-down speech); sant tradition across North Indian languages.
• Comparative Studies within Indian Languages: Sisir Kumar Das's history of Indian literature; Sahitya Akademi's History of Indian Literature project; comparing Urdu and Hindi literary traditions; regional modernisms (Bengal, Maharashtra, Kerala — 19th century).
• Oral and Folk Interface: Ramanujan's "three hundred Ramayanas"; multiple Mahabharatas; folk songs as comparative data; bhakti poets in folk tradition.

Unit 7: Postcolonialism, Diaspora, and Minority Literature

• Postcolonialism: Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978) — Discourse; Gayatri Spivak — subaltern; Homi Bhabha — hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence; nation and narration; "writing back" to empire; Caribbean literature (Édouard Glissant — creolisation, Relation).
• Diaspora Literature: Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children, 1981 — Booker of Bookers); V.S. Naipaul; Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake); Amitav Ghosh; diaspora identity, nostalgia, unhomely; Stuart Hall — diasporic identity as hybrid.
• Dalit Literature: Babasaheb Ambedkar's writing; Daya Pawar (Baluta, 1978 — first Dalit autobiography in Marathi); Namdeo Dhasal; Om Prakash Valmiki (Joothan, 1997); Bama (Karukku, 1992 — Tamil Dalit woman); Sharankumar Limbale (The Outcaste); Dalit aesthetic and counter-canon.
• Women's Writing: Mahasweta Devi (Breast Stories, Hajar Churashir Maa); Ismat Chughtai (The Quilt); Kamala Das; Amrita Pritam; feminist literary criticism; the "anxiety of authorship" (Gilbert and Gubar); women writing in postcolonial contexts.

Unit 8: Modernism, Postmodernism, and Contemporary Literatures

• Modernism: T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land, 1922 — impersonality, tradition); James Joyce (Ulysses — stream of consciousness, myth); Virginia Woolf (interior monologue); Tagore as global modernist; Hindi Nayi Kavita (New Poetry — Agyeya, Muktibodh); Urdu Progressive Writers' Movement (Faiz, Manto).
• Postmodernism: Jean-François Lyotard — incredulity towards metanarratives; Jean Baudrillard — simulacra and simulation; Linda Hutcheon — historiographic metafiction; Fredric Jameson — postmodernism as logic of late capitalism; Latin American magical realism (García Márquez, Borges).
• Contemporary Global Literatures: African (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, J.M. Coetzee); Latin American (Elena Ferrante, Roberto Bolaño); South Asian English (Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai); Haruki Murakami; Chinese literature (Mo Yan — Nobel 2012); Climate fiction (cli-fi).

Unit 9: Intercultural Poetics and Theory of Genre

• Genre Theory: Aristotle's Poetics — mimesis, catharsis, 3 unities (actually Aristotelian unity of action, + Renaissance additions of time and place); genre as contract between reader and text; Northrop Frye (Anatomy of Criticism, 1957) — four mythoi (comedy, romance, tragedy, satire); Todorov's theory of genre.
• Tragedy and Comedy Cross-Culturally: Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) vs. Sanskrit nāṭaka (Kālidāsa — 10 rūpakas); Sanskrit prohibited the tragic ending (dukha) in final act; Chinese and Japanese theatrical traditions; the grotesque (Bakhtin).
• Epic Across Cultures: Greek (Iliad, Odyssey); Latin (Aeneid); Sanskrit (Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa); Old English (Beowulf); Finnish (Kalevala); Indian folk epics vs. literary epics; Parry-Lord oral theory applied to non-Western epics.
• Lyric Poetry: Petrarchan sonnet → Shakespeare → 20th century; ghazal (Arabic/Persian origin → Urdu — Ghalib; → Hindi; → global); haiku (Japanese → global modernism); song vs. poem binary.
• Novel Across Cultures: Rise of the novel (Ian Watt, English novel); Bakhtin's dialogism; postcolonial novel; "mimicry" of Western novel forms; hybrid forms (magical realism; faction; autofiction).

Unit 10: Contemporary Issues in Comparative Literature

• Ethics of Comparison: Who compares with whom? Power asymmetries; Eurocentric comparative models; decolonising comparative literature; Non-Aligned Comparatism (Natalie Melas).
• Literature and Environment (Ecocriticism): Lawrence Buell; Cheryll Glotfelty; place in literature; pastoral and anti-pastoral; nature writing; climate change fiction (cli-fi — Ian McEwan, Barbara Kingsolver, Kim Stanley Robinson); Ursula K. Le Guin; Indian nature writing (Amitav Ghosh's The Great Derangement, 2016).
• Digital Literature: E-literature; hypertext fiction (Michael Joyce, Stuart Moulthrop); interactive narrative; digital storytelling; social media and literature; Goodreads and reading communities; AI-generated literature.
• Translation and Digital Humanities: Large-scale translation data; parallel corpora; MT evaluation; literary translation databases; Project Gutenberg; CLARIN; literary DH projects in India (Digital Humanities Alliance India).
• The Future of Comparative Literature: ACLA Report (Bernheimer, 1993 — multiculturalism); Haun Saussy's ACLA Report (2006 — "Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalisation"); Mary Louise Pratt — contact zones; world literature beyond Western canon; Indian Comparative Literature at crossroads.

Important Books

FAQs

Who can appear for UGC NET Comparative Literature?

Candidates with an MA/M.Phil. in Comparative Literature, any Indian or foreign language, English Literature, Cultural Studies, or Translation Studies with 55% marks (50% reserved) from a recognised university are eligible.

Is Comparative Literature a popular NET subject?

It has a relatively smaller candidate pool than English or Hindi, which means less competition for JRF quotas. For candidates with interdisciplinary backgrounds across multiple languages, it offers a distinct advantage.

Which unit is most important?

Unit 3 (Literary Theory — Formalism through Feminism) is typically the largest and most consistent contributor. Combined with Translation Studies (Unit 4), these two units give 30–40 questions across recent papers.

UGC NET तुलनात्मक साहित्य सिलेबस 2025-26 — सम्पूर्ण इकाईवार मार्गदर्शिका

तुलनात्मक साहित्य भाषाई, सांस्कृतिक और राष्ट्रीय सीमाओं से परे साहित्य का अध्ययन है। यह साहित्यिक सिद्धांत, अनुवाद, विश्व साहित्य और सांस्कृतिक आलोचना को एकत्रित करता है।

परीक्षा पैटर्न

इकाई 1: परिभाषा, इतिहास, और दायरा

• परिभाषाएं: Matthew Arnold; René Wellek & Austin Warren (Theory of Literature, 1949) — general, comparative, national literature का भेद; Susan Bassnett — CL = translation studies।
• French School: Paul Van Tieghem; Jean-Marie Carré; ऐतिहासिक; पश्चिमी यूरोप तक सीमित।
• American School: Wellek, Etiemble — non-Western साहित्य खोला; thematic comparisons।
• भारतीय योगदान: Sisir Kumar Das; Amiya Dev; A.K. Ramanujan; Indian Comparative Literature Association (ICLA)।

इकाई 2: तुलनात्मक साहित्य की पद्धतियां

• Influence Studies: Source-influence-reception triad; intermediaries (अनुवादक, यात्री)।
• Thematic Studies: Motifs और themes — Faust, Don Juan, Prometheus; Bakhtin — dialogism, chronotope।
• Imagology: National images; Hugo Dyserinck; Said's Orientalism as imagological critique।
• Distant Reading: Franco Moretti — quantitative analysis; computational comparative lit।

इकाई 3: साहित्यिक सिद्धांत

• Formalism और New Criticism: Shklovsky — ostranenie; Jakobson — poetic function; New Criticism — close reading, intentional/affective fallacy।
• Structuralism: Saussure (signifier/signified); Lévi-Strauss (binary oppositions); Barthes (S/Z, "death of the author")।
• Post-structuralism: Derrida — différance, logocentrism; Paul de Man — rhetoric।
• Psychoanalytic: Freud (uncanny, Oedipus); Lacan (mirror stage, Symbolic/Real/Imaginary); Bloom — anxiety of influence।
• Feminist Criticism: Beauvoir (The Second Sex); Woolf (A Room of One's Own); Butler — gender performativity।
• Marxist Criticism: Lukács — realism; Adorno — culture industry; Jameson — always historicise।

इकाई 4: अनुवाद अध्ययन

• सैद्धांतिक आधार: Eugene Nida — formal vs. dynamic equivalence; Lawrence Venuti — foreignisation vs. domestication; Even-Zohar — polysystem theory।
• Cultural Turn: Susan Bassnett और Lefevere — translation as cultural rewriting।
• भारतीय अनुवाद परंपरा: Valmiki → 300 भाषाओं में; Akbar — Mahabharata as Razmnamah; colonial translations (William Jones); Sahitya Akademi; A.K. Ramanujan के अनुवाद।
• Machine Translation: Google Translate; Neural MT; भारतीय भाषाओं के लिए iTranslate।

इकाई 5: विश्व साहित्य

• अवधारणा: Goethe का Weltliteratur (1827); Damrosch (What Is World Literature?, 2003) — "elliptical refraction"; Casanova — literary centre (Paris) vs. periphery।
• Canon Formation: Harold Bloom (The Western Canon); feminist, postcolonial challenge; Nobel Prize।
• गैर-पश्चिमी परंपराएं: Chinese (Tang poetry); Japanese (Haiku, Genji); Arabic (Arabian Nights); Persian (Rumi, Hafiz); African (Achebe, Ngugi)।
• Postcolonial Literature: Fanon; Bhabha — hybridity; Rushdie, Roy; Ngugi — Gikuyu में लिखना।

इकाई 6: भारतीय साहित्यिक परंपराएं

• Sanskrit काव्यशास्त्र: रस (भरत, अभिनवगुप्त) — नौ रस; Dhvani (आनंदवर्धन); Rīti (वामन); Vakrokti (कुंतक); Alaṃkāra (दंडिन); Aucitya (क्षेमेंद्र)।
• Tamil काव्यशास्त्र: Tolkāppiyam (c. 3री BCE–3री CE); akaṃ (love poetry) और puṟaṃ (heroic poetry); 5 tinai।
• भक्ति काव्यशास्त्र: उग्र/सौम्य भक्ति; vipralambha (विरह); कबीर की ulṭabāṃsī।
• Ramanujan — "300 Ramayanas" (1991): Multiple retellings; folk Ramayanas; comparative approach।

इकाई 7: Postcolonialism, Diaspora, Minority Literature

• Postcolonialism: Said (Orientalism, 1978); Spivak — subaltern; Bhabha — hybridity, third space।
• Diaspora Literature: Rushdie (Midnight's Children, 1981); Jhumpa Lahiri; Amitav Ghosh।
• दलित साहित्य: दया पवार (Baluta, 1978); Om Prakash Valmiki (Joothan); Bama (Karukku); counter-canon।
• महिला लेखन: Mahasweta Devi; Ismat Chughtai; Amrita Pritam; feminist criticism।

इकाई 8: Modernism, Postmodernism, Contemporary

• Modernism: Eliot (The Waste Land); Joyce (Ulysses); Tagore; Hindi Nayi Kavita (Agyeya, Muktibodh); Urdu Progressive Writers (Faiz, Manto)।
• Postmodernism: Lyotard — metanarrative; Baudrillard — simulacra; Hutcheon — historiographic metafiction; Jameson; Magical Realism (García Márquez, Borges)।
• समकालीन: Adichie; Roy; Ghosh; Murakami; Mo Yan (Nobel 2012); cli-fi।

इकाई 9: अंतर-सांस्कृतिक काव्यशास्त्र

• Genre Theory: Aristotle (Poetics — mimesis, catharsis); Northrop Frye (Anatomy of Criticism — 4 mythoi); Todorov।
• Tragedy Cross-Culturally: Greek vs. Sanskrit nāṭaka — दुखांत निषेध; Japanese Noh।
• Epic: Iliad/Odyssey; Mahābhārata/Rāmāyaṇa; Beowulf; Kalevala; oral theory।
• Novel: Ian Watt; Bakhtin (dialogism); postcolonial novel; hybrid forms।
• Lyric: Sonnet; Ghazal (Arabic/Persian → Urdu Ghalib → global); Haiku।

इकाई 10: समकालीन मुद्दे

• Ecocriticism: Lawrence Buell; cli-fi (McEwan, Kingsolver); Amitav Ghosh (The Great Derangement, 2016)।
• Digital Literature: E-literature; hypertext fiction; AI-generated literature।
• CL का भविष्य: ACLA Report (Bernheimer 1993; Saussy 2006); contact zones (Pratt); decolonising CL।

महत्वपूर्ण पुस्तकें

अक्सर पूछे जाने वाले प्रश्न

UGC NET तुलनात्मक साहित्य के लिए कौन पात्र है?

तुलनात्मक साहित्य, किसी भी भारतीय या विदेशी भाषा, अंग्रेजी साहित्य, या अनुवाद अध्ययन में न्यूनतम 55% (आरक्षित: 50%) के साथ MA/M.Phil. वाले पात्र हैं।

सबसे महत्वपूर्ण इकाई कौन सी है?

Unit 3 (साहित्यिक सिद्धांत — Formalism से Feminism तक) और Unit 4 (अनुवाद अध्ययन) मिलकर 30–40% प्रश्न देते हैं।

तुलनात्मक साहित्य में Weltliteratur (विश्व-साहित्य) की अवधारणा Goethe (1749–1832) की देन है — उनकी दृष्टि थी कि साहित्य राष्ट्रीय सीमाओं को पार करने की क्षमता रखता है और विश्व की सभी साहित्यिक परम्पराएँ एक साझी मानवीय बातचीत में भाग लेती हैं। आधुनिक Weltliteratur-विमर्श में Pascale Casanova का The World Republic of Letters (1999) और Franco Moretti का Distant Reading महत्त्वपूर्ण हैं। UGC NET तुलनात्मक साहित्य में Postcolonial Literary Theory — Edward Said (Orientalism, 1978), Homi Bhabha (The Location of Culture), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Can the Subaltern Speak?) — केन्द्रीय विषय हैं।