Union Académique Internationale

Project nº66, adopted in 2003

The main aim of the CHLEL is to publish comparative, collaborative and experimental literary histories. CHLEL has four sub-series: a geographical, a period-oriented, a topic-oriented, and a problem-series. Books in the first three series typically include 2-4 volumes, books in the last one include one volume that focuses on one selected literary historiographical problem. Criteria for acceptance of a project within any of these series is that the book contains a genuine new approach to a specific area of literary history and that it builds on a comparative methodology. All volumes are published with John Benjamins. CHLEL is committed to publish at least one volume each year but in recent years we have published more than one volume. As the title of the committee hints we focus on literatures in European languages, but always on new perspectives on European literature. In 2016, the second volume of A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula (ed. C. Dominguez et al) came out. It opens up for a discussion of critical relations between national and regional literatures in the Peninsula. Last year CHLEL published the first vol. of Nordic Literature that analyses Nordic literature from innovative angles: the main approach in this volume being “spatial nodes” (incl. landscapes, waterscapes, cityscapes, lightscapes, etc.) (eds. S. Sondrup and M. Sandberg). In 2018 the second vol. came out that focuses on figural nodes. The last volume (2019) will focus on temporal nodes. In 2017 the fourh and final volume of our huge literary history of the Renaissance came out L'Epoque de la Renaissance (1400-1600), Tome II: La nouvelle culture (1480-1520) (ed. Eva Kushener). We have an ongoing project on Latin Literatures (ed. Francesco Stella) that focuses on 1000 years of Latin ‘cosmopolitan’ culture in Europe and the intermediality and literariness of this culture. CHLEL have an increased focus on literatures in European languages outside of Europe for instance in Africa and Latin America, an increased focus on the interactions between literature in Europe and literature outside of Europe and on the understanding of European literature seen in light of the consequences of globaliza- tion, migration and transcultural influences. We have an ongoing project, whose first volume will be finished on Transculture: Contemporary Literature and Migration in Europe (ed. Fridrun Rinner, et al). An ongoing project on Landscapes of realism (ed. Dirk Gottsche) brings together the study of very different forms of realism inside and outside of Europe. CHEL have a project on Transatlantic Cultures (ed. Jean Moura) and a project with the title A Comparative Literary History on Slavery (eds. M. Dobie, M.A. Baggesgaard and K.-M. Simonsen). All projects re-think European literature in a global world, including literatures in Latin America and Africa. The relation between Europe and the world was also debated at our 50 years anniversary celebrated with a conference June 2, 2017 at St. Andrews University that had the title of Global Perspectives on the Past and Future in Comparative Histories on Literatures in European Languages. Contributions to this conference are to be published with Arcadia in 2018, guest editors are CHLEL-members C. Dominguez and Birgit Neumann. CHEL also have a strong focus on the literary object, its redefinition in a new digital era, its old and new media forms, and relations to other aesthetic art forms and literature’s relation to literary culture. In 2016 we published Or Words to that Effect: Orality and the Writing of Literary History, edited by Daniel Chamberlain and Edward Chamberlin which was a problem oriented volume dedicated to the problem of historicizing oral literature. In 2018 CHEL accepted a new project on The literary history of writing processes (ed. Dirk van Hulle) which will historicize authors’ approach to writing in different genres. And CHEL accepted a project on A Comparative Intermedial History of Literature in the Baroque Age (eds. M. Fusillo and H. Mitterbauer) that will focus on the relations between different media and art forms in Europe and Latin America both in the historical baroque and in the neo-baroque. CHEL has members from 16 universities in Europe and America and organises one meeting every year in changing locations.