Comparative Literature in Iran: Emergence and Challenges

From the viewpoint of French school, comparative literature is a critical study of literature dealing with the examination of literature in two or more different Linguistic, cultural or national groups. The America’s comparative school of literature considers comparative literature to be an inter-field research which makes a cross-comparison of the literature of different nations and examines the relationship between literature and other majors of humanities and fine art. The scientific concept of comparative literature first emerged out of France. Then, it entered some western countries like America and then the Far East and other countries such as Iran. Iran is one of the Asian countries which has attempted to establish comparative literature. However, Iranian researchers carried out a lot of scientific and practical research in this domain neglecting the theories of comparative literature. This issue has caused a lot of chaotic and incoherent thoughts for our current field of comparative literature.