Introduction

Driven by the process of globalization and the wave of digitization, the digital humanities are now not only positioned as a hot topic in academia but also flourish in the higher education system. Since comparative literature and the digital humanities have many things in common, we need to explore more shared issues between these two disciplines. The close relations between comparative literature and digital humanities found unique embodiment in American comparatist Franco Moretti’s world literature studies with auxiliary reading supported by big data analysis. His pioneering exploration built a bridge between these two disciplines by remapping world literature with big data from both theoretical and practical dimensions. He proved that the discipline of comparative literature can serve as a driving force for the development of digital humanities rather than completely relying on other disciplines and borrowing methodologies from other fields. As Moretti stated, “In fact, a desire for a general theory of the new literary archive is slowing emerging in the world of digital humanities” (Moretti, 1950, p. 122). This paper discusses the disciplinary issues and theoretical construction of the digital humanities through a comparison with the discipline of comparative literature. Based on the similarities between the disciplines of comparative literature and the digital humanities, this paper points out what important lessons, as well as significant guidance, can be derived from the disciplinary perspective of comparative literature and applied to the digital humanities as a driving force.

Similarities between comparative literature and the digital humanities

Looking at the current development of comparative literature and the digital humanities from a global perspective, the author finds that since comparative literature and the digital humanities have many things in common, especially in terms of their persistent pursuit of becoming an independent discipline, this makes them worthy of systematic investigation. The author argues that the similarities between comparative literature and the digital humanities are mainly manifested in the following four aspects: the disciplines’ histories (about their scope), structures (about their institutions), ideals (about their methodologies), and prospects (about their missions).

First, from the perspective of disciplinary histories, comparative literature and the digital humanities were both born at a time of great change that was reshaping humanity and even the way of human existence promoted by new transportation and communication technology. Under these circumstances, some essential elements, such as the global vision, systematic cognition, cross-cultural approach, and interdisciplinary method embodied in the very nature of comparative literature and the digital humanities, intrinsically demand that these two disciplines adopt a worldwide perspective, an open mode, a multiculturalist ideal, and a systematic approach.

Second, from the perspective of disciplinary structures, we find that comparative literature and the digital humanities are all compound disciplines, namely, compositive disciplines based upon the structure of “research method(s)” + “research object(s)”. Both of these disciplines should, need to, and can be sublimated from a pure and simple method, preserve their particularity and locality, and be refined into a kind of highly sophisticated, elevated theory with integrity and universality. Additionally, both of these disciplines should be organically integrated, going far beyond the simple combination of method and theory, with the former absorbing the potential meaning and academic value of the latter, and theory in return providing some deeper understanding with the aid of method, thus achieving the disciplinary ideal that the two can achieve together, thus contributing to their mutual promotion. The method and theory of these two disciplines, that is, comparative literature and the digital humanities, respectively, can serve as vertical and horizontal praxes of these disciplines. Sometimes in parallel and sometimes in an interweaving manner, the foundations of the two disciplines support each other.

Third, from the perspective of disciplinary ideals, both comparative literature and the digital humanities have a kind of strong internal inclusiveness and external openness because of their nature and scale. Both of these disciplines can maintain their particularity while trying to gain a kind of universality and summarize the similarities and particularities of human experiences to explore the cognitive mechanism and cultural spirit of the whole of humankind from the perspective of human ontology. With the dialectical unity of cosmopolitanism and cosmolocalism, as well as being divergent and dynamic, both of these disciplines are trying to construct a kind of pluralistic, sublimated integrity based on their own particularities.

Fourth, from the perspective of disciplinary prospects, both comparative literature and digital humanities meet the requirements of this globalized age, with a prominent characteristic of valuing high-speed and worldwide communication. From a macro perspective that crosses time and space, as well as support from multiple interdisciplinary methodologies, both of these disciplines seek certain solutions for existing cultural problems and promote mutual benefits among different civilizations on a global scale. As the disciplines develop, they may experience various doubts and objections, face many challenges, and even experience survival crises. Therefore, in order to turn disciplinary crises into opportunities, a theoretical, positive construction mode is needed to eliminate vital defects, solve existing problems, and develop new theories.

Comparative literature: a mirror for the digital humanities

To establish itself as an independent and well-institutionalized discipline, the digital humanities should first seek to address four fundamental problems, namely, to develop a clear scope, a mature institutional system, a unique methodology, and a distinctive mission. In this regard, comparative literature can function as a perfect mirror for the digital humanities.

The first problem is how to properly answer the question regarding the scope of a given discipline: how to define a clear and consistent object of study. The field of comparative literature, similar to cultural studies, “possesses neither a well-defined methodology nor demarcated fields for investigation (During, 1993).” This problem also exists in the field of the digital humanities. What kinds of studies belong to the domain of digital humanities, and what kinds of studies do not belong in a strict sense? We should strive to clarify this issue. As a new discipline, the digital humanities, an intersectional discipline of computing science and the humanities, should first determine a well-defined research field as well as definite research boundaries to distinguish itself from other disciplines or position as a subordinate branch to other disciplines.

The problem of the unlimited expansion of the research field in comparative literature, which took place in the last century, provides an important lesson. Comparative literature, as a kind of literary study, should be related to literature in general, and by nature, it should be restricted to the fundamental category of literary study. If not, there will be a serious problem in defining the boundary of this discipline. When the specific boundary of a discipline is intentionally or unintentionally ignored and transgressed upon, the side effects can cause serious problems later on. In this way, many types of pan-interdisciplinary studies easily transgressed into the territory of comparative literature and abused its title without concern, making comparative literature a powerful but unhelpful “vacuum cleaner”. Various kinds of “pan-cultural” and “pan-theoretical” studies that neither belong to transnational literary studies in the strict sense nor adopt a comparative method were subsumed under comparative literature, which made it become an obese but ever-hungry discipline diverted onto a wayward path of all-inclusive, unlimited and unconventional expansion.

When the content of noncomparative literature studies was included in the field of comparative literature, the theoretical studies that played a constructive and defining role in the discipline system of comparative literature were not strengthened or well used and did not exert an extensive impact upon the status and standardization of comparative literature as a discipline, with the result that “comparative literature” is a very vague term that is too obscure, confusing, and controversial to be referred to as a discipline. Just as Culler (2006, p. 239) claims, comparative literature will become “a discipline of such overwhelming scope that it no longer sounds like an academic field at all: the study of discourses and cultural productions of all sorts throughout the entire world.”

Comparative literature is only a branch of literary study; likewise, the digital humanities, which are interdisciplinary by nature, are likely to become a very complicated theoretical system on an extremely large scale. The description of the crisis of comparative literature, “if everything is comparative literature, then comparative literature is nothing”, is also fitting for the digital humanities: “if everything is the digital humanities, then the digital humanities are nothing.” In case this discipline wishes to avoid being dismantled by its own unlimited expansion, a definite demarcation of the research field is necessary. When constructing the theoretical system of the digital humanities, we should not only embrace the ideal of being open and tolerant, welcoming any academic material which could make a specific contribution to this discipline, but also be mindful of “unconditional openness” and “unconventional inclusiveness”.

Throughout their development as disciplines, both comparative literature and the digital humanities have been questioned and criticized due to their names and natures being at odds with their content. Admittedly, most academic circles have reached a common understanding of what constitutes comparative literature and the digital humanities, forming a general idea about what these two terms mean and what they refer to, though some still contest these consensuses. However, due to substantial controversies in the naming of disciplines, neither discipline has formed an absolute scientific standard by which to define itself or adopted a completely unified definition. Accordingly, we can adopt a “method of falsification” from Karl Popper here. While we have not perhaps at present formed a universally accepted ideal or a clear definition for the names and scopes of comparative literature and the digital humanities as two disciplines, we can put aside some ambiguity and complicated elements in their definition and interpretation, as well as a diversified understanding of these two concepts first, and then exclude some specific studies that do not belong to either discipline. Thus, through a reverse method, we can establish an uncontroversial definition and substantive boundary for both comparative literature and the digital humanities.

The second problem is the institutionalization of the discipline. This problem is an extension of the first one, and it also serves as a basic guarantee that the ideal of digital humanities cannot be deeply rooted and grow rapidly in a university system as a kind of academic institution. Only when the first question is properly addressed and solved can the second question be adequately addressed and solved. The first task is therefore to determine the interdisciplinary orientation of the digital humanities, and the second is to begin the interdisciplinary classification and academic evaluation of the digital humanities. If we want scholars of the digital humanities and their publications to survive and develop in the current academic system, the subdisciplinary classifications and academic evaluations of these scholars should be explicitly and fairly clarified. How can we determine a clear and proper division and classification for various kinds of subdisciplines under the concept of inclusiveness in the discipline of the digital humanities (Brügger, 2016, p. 2), and how can we guarantee that scholars and their interdisciplinary publications gain full academic credit to enhance their academic reputation so that their academic title and teaching position can be acknowledged when they enter a university or pursue a professional position in a specific department or related departments? This might be a constant challenge to the existing academic system posed by the current and future development of the digital humanities.

In the past, it might have been relatively easy for academic committees at universities to define what field a scholar’s publications belonged to or, according to fixed research fields or specific research paradigms, to define in what field a scholar was engaged in order to define what kind of scholar he or she was. However, at present, the blurring of the boundaries of the humanities and interdisciplinary studies may make it much harder to define what field or subject these publications belong to. In this regard, there is an important lesson for the digital humanities in the development of comparative literature, stemming from the confusion about academic classification caused by “excessive interdisciplinary studies”.

During its development, the field of comparative literature gradually threw off the yoke of “literary comparison” based on a paradigm of comparative methodology and constructed a vast and open research field. In this way, various fashionable theoretical terms and paradigms formed support for the construction of disciplinary theories in comparative literature as a poly-system. The paradigms and methodologies those comparatists adopt are all macrointerdisciplinary, generally go far beyond the boundary of literary studies, belong to cultural studies in a broad sense, and have no direct relevance to comparative literary studies at all. Nor do they focus on literary text mining and the interpretation of the literary meaning or adhere to the confined field of literary studies and literary criticism. Their research object never returns from other fields after having crossed the border of literary studies, which leads their research to infiltrate many different disciplines and directly enter into a broad range of disciplines, thus making it too difficult to distinguish what field they belong to. It seems strange that those scholars who are given academic titles such as “(distinguished) professor of comparative literature” actually neither adopt “comparative methods” nor study “literature” at all. It is even more curious that almost no comparatist has ever protested this. Is it because these noncomparative comparatists occupy an authoritarian position that no one dares to question or criticize them? Do the majority of these noncomparative comparatists and comparative comparatists benefit from this academic capitalist system, making them embarrassed to voice even a little criticism? There is no clear answer to this problem. This situation might be attributed to this being an abnormal phenomenon in a well-functionalized system of academic capitalism in pursuit of well-defined academic interests. In this way, the title “(distinguished) professor of comparative literature” has been used to describe an “academic Odysseus” whose academic identity is too difficult to define. Ultimately, these scholars cannot find a definite research focus and instead “wander” among different disciplines. There is serious confusion regarding the definition of scholars’ academic interests and identities as well as their teaching orientations, which suggests to some people that there is a major problem in the current academic system. Some cannot help but question a scholar’s professional competence and academic identity from the first impression, even if he or she might be versatile and well-qualified. Kenneth Sullivan, an American comparatist, once voiced that “one’s place as a practitioner in the field was fairly clearly identifiable in terms of one’s research and curricular focus on one or more of these paradigms, but now “these fairly clear-cut alignments no longer” exist, and the overexpansion of interdisciplinary studies has caused a predicament “not unique to literary studies- nearly every nearly every field in the humanities and interpretive social sciences is in the same boat” (Surin, 2011).

Likewise, the academic system of the digital humanities in different colleges and departments would probably cause a formal debate as well: How should we define the boundaries among the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences? How can we establish a definite, reasonable academic standard to evaluate and identify the professional qualifications and achievements of various types of “jumping” scholars from a variety of different fields? These questions not only relate to academic institutions and the career development of those scholars at a micro level but also help inform academic policies, cultivate academic ideals, formulate academic ethics, and dictate academic management at a macro level. If a relatively stable disciplinary system cannot be well established and a widely acknowledged standard is absent, many practical problems will arise from the categorization and mechanisms in the development of these disciplines as well as the recognition and evaluation of academic publications. Different colleges and departments may fall into heated disputes due to the unequal promotion of professional titles, distribution of academic resources, and recognition of academic achievement. In this regard, we need to formulate a reasonable and practical scheme and establish a mature and refined regulation system to solve the new problems that are emerging and may emerge in the future following the subdivision of the digital humanities. The third problem relates to the unique methodology of the discipline. That is, a unique kind of method must be defined that can reflect a clear ideal for the discipline and serve as an important backbone for the structure of the digital humanities as an independent discipline, and function as a guarantee to consolidate the present and future status of this discipline. Once again, the pursuit of a distinctive, disciplinary methodology during the development of the field of comparative literature provides an important lesson. The first crisis that emerged in the history of comparative literature was a challenge to its very legitimacy. This was possibly one of the greatest challenges that comparative literature once faced in its effort to become a scientific discipline. Italian scholar Benedetto Croce launched a very fierce attack on the “comparative method” of comparative literature: “The comparative method, precisely because it is a mere method of research, cannot suffice to delimit a field of study… I cannot understand how a specialization can be constructed out of comparative literary history (Weisstein, 1986, p. 104).” From Croce’s statement we can see that the “comparative” method is but a common, universal method, full of subjective arbitrariness, can be applied to any discipline, and is not restricted only to the specific discipline of comparative literature, so it cannot serve as a fundamental methodology for comparative literature as an independent discipline. Additionally, as Croce said, it is not surprising that “no scholarly discipline has enjoyed as uninterrupted a tradition of doubts about its right to exist, expressed by its adepts (Remak, 1960, p. 3).” Again, as American comparatist Saussy (2005, p. 12) put it, “one way of addressing that doubt about whether Comparative Literature ought to exist is to think of it as a discipline defined by the search for its proper objects.” Therefore, the subjective and arbitrary characteristics of the “comparative” method are not scientific and stable enough to lay a scientific basis for comparative literature as a discipline. Facing Croce’s challenge, French comparatists developed the slogan “comparative literature is not literary comparison”. On the one hand, the French comparatists effectively but only briefly defended against an attack on the comparative method. However, this somewhat compromised solution also made the term comparative literature look at odds with its actual nature. For this reason, they advocated that comparative literature studies abandon the comparative method and replace it with a kind of empirical study similar to a historical relationship study of the international communication of different national literature. To view it another way, the abandonment of the “comparative” methodology gave the French comparatists a second chance to reconsider the methodology of “comparison” in the discipline of comparative literature and injected a kind of “transnational” and “empirical” meaning into the method of simple comparison among different literary texts. Therefore, this opportunity provided an evolving and sublimating way for a simple “comparison” to absorb more scientific and disciplinary meanings so as to be promoted as a “unique methodology”. On the other hand, French comparatists intentionally set some limitations for the disciplinary scope of comparative literature. In this way, the French comparatists turn their backs on the very nature of comparative literature as a type of literary study, divert their academic path from literary esthetics studies, and somewhat overemphasize the historical study of international literary communication, which caused a vital defect in this discipline. To defend its methodology, the discipline retreated from a vast wonderland of literary studies that were worthy of exploring in multiple ways. Thus, at the expense of a large reduction in their research scope, French comparatists temporarily compromised the discipline’s legitimacy, diverting comparative literature from a type of intrinsic study to a type of extrinsic study, and stuck to an empirical study of literary history.

In his famous speech “The Crisis of comparative literature” delivered in 1985, American comparatist Wellek (1963, p. 282) argued that “the most serious sign of the precarious state of our study is the fact that it has not been able to establish a distinct subject matter and a specific methodology”. According to him, the discipline was on the edge of peril, and a serious indication of this was that it had failed to establish an exclusive research object and a unique kind of methodology. In this way, American comparatists reopened the border intentionally established by French comparatists, enabled comparative literature to return to a type of “intrinsic literary study” and to the field of literary esthetics and literary criticism without external historical influences that still affect comparative literary studies. In addition, American comparatists also emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary methodology for exploring the relationship between literature and other disciplines. We cannot deny that American comparatists have made a great contribution in returning the discipline of comparative literature to its normal path and reopened its closed borders, which should not have been closed in the first place. However, in the meantime, many problems also have arisen in the critical practices of American comparatists, who are leading comparative literature to become a discipline without specified boundaries embodied in an uncontrollable inclination of pancultural studies yet still lacking a distinctive methodology. Considering a simple method of literary comparison was not enough to support comparative literature as a kind of discipline, we need to endow “comparison” with more disciplinary and theoretical meaning. Thus, the comparative method in the discipline of comparative literature has finally been elevated, enshrined in light of cross-cultural significance, gone far beyond the simple method of “literary comparison”, and reached a higher level and deeper understanding of what it means to be culturally oneself or culturally other. Jean Bessière, a French comparatist and former vice president of the ICLA, once voiced a very creative opinion, arguing that the method of “comparison” had already absorbed the idea of being both “international and empirical” from French comparatists. Finally, in an era of globalization, holding a tolerant attitude toward multiculturalism, cultural conflicts, cultural coexistence, and cultural hybridity and a better understanding of a mutual-beneficial relationship among different national literature can and will take the place of the dual or multiple oppositions between “culturally oneself” and “culturally others”. This kind of social context will help us deconstruct the oppositional relationship among different national literature of dominating and being dominated, and of leading and being subordinate, and will eliminate literary heterogeneity, literary unfamiliarity, literary incomprehensibility, and literary nontranslatability, thus allowing mutual cognition and recognition among all national literature to be achieved in a cross-cultural context based on cultural self-reflection and mutual learning. This author argues that Jean Bessière’s attitude toward the “comparison” in comparative literature strives to place the literary comparison of national literature in a global literary gestalt, enabling the concept of “comparison” to become imbued with a kind of systematic gestalt ideal, including specific types of thoughts, beliefs, practices, and paradigms, to construct a world literature community that influences the future of humankind.

This author also believes that the comparative methodology in comparative literature should not be regarded as a pure, simple method of “comparison” in common sense but rather endowed with a specific meaning in the particular discipline of comparative literature.

First, the discipline of comparative literature brings forward some explicit requirements for the conventionality and applicability of the comparative method and goes far beyond the simple, superficial method of an “X + Y” comparison. From the historical study of international literary communication proposed by French comparatists to literary criticism and interdisciplinary studies advocated by American comparatists and then to the studies of cross-heterogeneous civilization and literary variation promoted by Chinese comparatists, a critical response to the inclination of Eurocentrism and Western-centrism will drive the “comparative method” to a more macro and overall understanding based on the dual reference of “culturally us” and “culturally them.”

Second, in the compound interdisciplinarity established on the basis of a general method “comparison” + a specific research object, “literary studies” and the “comparative” method can acquire a special meaning at a more macro level and with more profound meaning than an ordinary method of “literary comparison”. In the disciplinary dimension of comparative literature, the “comparative” method has become an international ideal and a unique worldly perspective. That is, based upon a foundation of a deepening mutual understanding and complementarity among different bodies of national literature in a comparative and international way, “literary comparison” will follow a route starting from and then exceeding the bounds of national literature, with the ultimate goal of constructing and reconstructing a concept of world literature and world poetics on both a theoretical and a practical level.

In other words, the comparative methodology of comparative literature has gained a type of “cultural consciousness”, including “cultural self-awareness” and “cultural awareness of cultural others”. The final goal of comparative literature is to provide a cross-cultural reference as well as cross-fertilization intertextuality on a macro level, indexed by national-self and national-others, and at an elevated level of holding a multiculturalist and cross-culturalist ideal, thus promoting a deeper understanding of world literary writing, world literature, and world poetics in a shifting perspective from local to global then to “glocal”.

From the deductive statement that comparative literature is not a simple kind of literary comparison among different national literature, we could also claim that the digital humanities are not a simple digitalization of the humanities. The very term “digital” functioning in the digital humanities as a type of research method suggests an ideal of the special digitalization of research objects, research methods, academic cooperation, publications, and communication, as well as the application of digital technologies. We cannot deny that such a methodology is not unique or argue that it should be restricted only to the field of digital humanities. It is a universal type of academic methodology that can be wielded in many disciplines. Still, what we should not ignore is that the concept of “digital” is a core word within the discipline of the digital humanities and is more profound than being a simple method of applying statistics or digital technology to the humanities, or being a symbol of a digitalized medium; it is extended and sublimated as a philosophic conception imbued with some ontological meaning and attached to a deeper philosophical meaning. Because of their interweaving relationship between science, technologies, and humanistic thoughts, the field of the digital humanities integrates the dialectic duality rooted deeply in itself. It is open to all kinds of theoretical resources but is also cautious about assimilating them. In terms of research methodology, it stresses both an experimental and speculative path; in terms of research pattern, it advocates both a cooperative and an independent mode; in terms of research paradigm, it welcomes both multimodal and demonstrational methods; and in terms of analysis research results, it supports both experimental programs and critical thinking. Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, and Jared Cohen, the creative director of Google, described the unprecedented challenges faced by the digital humanities in the new digital era with great accuracy: “We’ll experience more change at a quicker rate than any previous generation, and this change, driven in part by the devices in our own hands, will be more personal and participatory than we can even imagine (Schmidt and Cohen, 2013, p. 253).” Rather than taking the pessimistic tune of the “warning oracle” with its doomsday judgments, this author is more inclined to accept the optimistic assertion of the pioneering Negroponte (1995, p. 229): “Like a force of nature, the digital age cannot be denied or stopped. It has four very powerful qualities that will result in its ultimate triumph: de-centralizing globalizing, harmonizing, and empowering”. The future has come just as Negroponte described. As a new research method and way of existence, being digital brings new hope and new well-being to the digital human:

“The harmonizing effect of being digital is already apparent has previously partitioned disciplines and enterprises find themselves collaborating, not competing. A previously missing common language emerges, allowing people to understand across boundaries (Negroponte, 1995, p. 230).”

As mentioned above, both comparative literature and the digital humanities are interdisciplinary by nature due to the duality resulting from the combination of practices and theories, the duality of “partial integration” and “systematical construction”, and the duality of the “interdisciplinarity” and “standardization” of the disciplines. On the one hand, their interdisciplinary natures cause these disciplines to be embodied in a feature of academic openness, which makes it easy to absorb many resources from different disciplines; on the other hand, this same nature causes them to be plagued by potentially weak standardization and legitimacy due to unclear boundaries and unlimited expansion to involve too many areas and fields. Therefore, both comparative literature and the digital humanities need to establish a solid discipline structure based on their “interdisciplinary nature” and provide a feasible but scientific and legitimate basis for their own development.

The “macro disciplinary” structure of the digital humanities extends the field’s distinctive concepts and research paradigms: first, in English, the name “the digital humanities” is in plural form, so the digital humanities are interdisciplinary by nature. The field is a compound discipline, with a variety of different academic methodologies from many different disciplines, so it can naturally adopt different theoretical resources from many different disciplines. At the same time, academic feasibility can also be increased, and research fields can be easily enlarged. Second, there is a mutually defined relationship between the two keywords in its name: “digital” and “humanities”. The concepts of “digital” and “humanities” are not a kind of “one-way defining logic” that blends disciplines through symbiosis, nor does the discipline follow a single logic from either the digital or the humanities; it follows a dual, dialectic logic that reshapes and refines multiple disciplines to form an interdependent relationship with each other. Therefore, the compound structure and academic mission of the digital humanities determine the field’s overall development characteristics, namely, consolidating and deepening the overall relationship between the digital and the humanities based on the two area’s interdisciplinary, dual structure: on the one hand, this involves applying digital technology to explore new ideas and features of humanities; on the other hand, in the field of the humanities, this involves demonstrating how digital technology can reshape humanity and humanism from an ontological perspective at a philosophical level. In other words, comparative literature seeks a structural, mutual understanding, and complementarity among different national types of literature through a comparative study to construct a dialectical, world literature with both national and global characteristics. Likewise, based on a type of objective, quantitative statistics and a subjective study of the humanities, the digital humanities promote a theoretical intersection and coordinated development of digital technology and the humanities. This is a way of exploring how digital humanities can be used as a worldwide methodology to deepen the local humanistic experience and, in turn, explore how local, humanistic experiences can make a complementary contribution to the worldwide study of the digital humanities; thus, a unique kind of computational and philosophical theory can be constructed. A type of interdisciplinary scientific philosophy can provide the humanities with some new vision and media to begin transnational, cross-cultural, cross-media, interdisciplinary, and communicative research about certain information and explore an overall construction of a dynamic system of ultramodern media based on the digital, communicative mode of global information communication as well as its reception and feedback. In this way, the digital humanities can try to conduct an in-depth investigation into the new ways of digital beings and the form and process of digital technology in profoundly changing and shaping people’s minds and even human nature itself.

The fourth issue is the disciplinary mission, i.e., the research ideals and goals of this discipline. The first step in resolving this issue is to answer the question of where the discipline comes from, and the second is to answer the question of where the discipline is heading. Then, the third step is to answer the question of how to build this discipline in the real world, and the fourth is to answer the question of why this discipline matters. An independent discipline should have a specific, unique mission that can distinguish it from other disciplines and other branches within a university.

What distinguishes comparative literature from national literature or foreign literature, as well as other subbranches of literary studies, is that it is based upon the comparison of individual similarities and differences in literary meanings in the process of writing, critical reading, diverse reception, and cultural innovation in national literature. Its special disciplinary characteristics and mission create a grand and transcendental vision that is formed by two central axes: a global vision across regions and a historical vision across time. Its ultimate goal is to construct a kind of world literature with an overall optimization of structure with one great effort. The mission and goal of this discipline can be fully demonstrated and achieved by the special disciplinary orientation, namely, making a dialectical adjustment to this compound, open discipline with these essential elements: internationality, interdisciplinarity, particularity, and integrity. The discipline of the digital humanities has arisen in an era when the prevalence of electronic media and artificial intelligence on a worldwide scale, and the digitization of research objects, methods, and tools make the digitization of the humanities and social sciences an irreversible trend. As Negroponte (1995, p. 229) put it, “like a force of nature, the digital age cannot be denied or stopped.” Schmidt and Cohen (2013, p. 254) also made a prophetic prediction for this new digital era: “A digital caste system will endure well into the future, and people’s experience will be greatly determined by where they fall into this structure.” Therefore, the unique mission of the digital humanities is that it should explore how the practices and theories of digital technology can support the construction and development of the humanities from the perspective of constructing a disciplinary theory as a system. The research purpose of the digital humanities is not only the subjective object of the humanities but also the essential attribute in defining this discipline, which is promoting the development of humanity or human culture, investigating the nature of humanity, and changing humanism in light of social and industrial forces.

In comparative literature, “literary comparison” is not the ultimate goal of a specific discipline but rather a method and direction. The true ultimate goal of comparative literature is to compare and integrate “national literature” to construct a kind of “world literature” or “general literature” from an international or global viewpoint upon a basis of a mutual understanding. Similarly, “digitalization” in the digital humanities is not the ultimate goal but rather a method and direction. For quantitative research and theoretical construction in the digital humanities, the ultimate goal is to construct a “scientific philosophy” with both objective, scientific digital analysis, and subjective, human-oriented perception.

When the process of integration and fusion happens, great leaps from a partial view to a holistic perspective and from a simple method to a type of systematic theory occur, and comparative literature and the digital humanities will both become compound disciplines with interdisciplinary structures that contain a concept of “gestalt” and advocate an idea that the whole is greater than the parts. Jean Bessière formally introduced the concept of gestalt into the field of comparative literature when he referred to “a gestalt of globalization and “a gestalt of literature”, attempted to reinterpret the meaning of gestalt in a future and global context, and broke from the traditional idea suggested by “literary continuity”. In “How to Reform comparative literature’s Paradigms in the Age of Globalization”, Bessière (2001, p. 24) proposed constructing “a two-dimensional integration of gestalt globalization and literature” and argued that the contemporary discourse about globalization is “a kind of meta-narrative”, equating this with “an historical gestalt” that reformulates the usual paradigms of historicism and advocating against “reading both literature(s) and comparative criticism either as the reiteration or as the contestant of that meta-narrative.”

In this way, we can inject into the digital humanities a sort of disciplinary ideal of gestalt psychology, emphasize its integrity, and argue that the whole is greater than a simple sum of its parts. According to Jean Bessière, comparative literature and world literature were both born in a global era marked by rapid cross-border communication and close relations among different countries. Therefore, we should adopt a synchronic perspective and focus on cross-regional studies rather than adopting a diachronic perspective and focusing on historical studies to determine what new ideas globalization brings. This author agrees with what Jean Bessière described. Comparative literature does indeed have a “gestalt” structure. As far as the purpose of comparative literature and world literature remaining unchanged, comparative literature and world literature as disciplines would embody an internal idea of gestalt psychology. Moretti’s conjectures on world literature are also quite beneficial. As Moretti pointed out, world literature is not an “object”, it is a “problem that asks for a new critical method: and no one has ever found a method by just reading more texts” (Moretti, 1950, p. 46). He also claimed that “the beauty” of distant reading plus world literature “go against the grain of national historiography” (1950, p. 53). Moretti tried to clarify how various kinds of forces, such as the market, forms, labor, the trajectory between the periphery and center, and power are interconnected and hidden under the cover of world literature, which helps in investigating our environment and determining how “a planetary system” was formed around us, gaining deeper thoughts on the mechanism of “a law of literary evolution”, and reinvestigating literary history with a different “digital” eye. Additionally, he used network theory to conduct a plot analysis, providing an essential piece in the computational analysis of literature and leaving comparatists a very good example to follow. The author argues that the ideal of disciplinary gestalt can be outlined in these six points:

  1. 1.

    The research scope of world literature is much more than an arbitrary comparison and a simple superposition of national literature.

  2. 2.

    The interdisciplinary methodologies of world literature are much more than a type of imposed interpretation among different disciplines.

  3. 3.

    Research on the disciplinary history of world literature is much more than a documentary investigation of its developmental history in different phases.

  4. 4.

    The research methodology of comparative literature is much more than a simple, random, or arbitrary literary comparison.

  5. 5.

    The cross-cultural methodology of world literature studies goes much deeper than simply collecting and examining historical records of international relationships among various bodies of national literature.

  6. 6.

    The overall construction of world literature is much larger than a simple composition of different bodies of national literature through a comparative method.

With an open, global viewpoint and a specific methodology, as a discipline, comparative literature has the dual mission of, on the one hand, summarizing similarities across all bodies of literature and deducing a common law or mechanism for humanity’s literary mind and spirit, and on the other hand, exploring the deeper structure of literary differences and their structural complementation so that different kinds of literariness can be explored, respected, mutually understood, and even transformed into a driving force for literary innovation. How literature and literary theories from various cultures interact with each other and how cultural genes carried by literary and cultural discourses/contexts vary and mutate in a cross-cultural communication context should all be profoundly and systematically investigated from a broad, international, and global perspective instead of a narrow national and local perspective.

In the same way, the concept of the digital humanities goes far beyond just research that applies digital technology in the humanities and constructs a kind of metadiscourse of the humanities. The holistic idea of gestalt structures is the reason why comparisons of national literature form a transcendental “comparative literature” and the digital in the humanities shapes a kind of metanarratology for the digital humanities. Like comparative literature, the disciplinary ideal of the digital humanities is open, celebrating the ideal of being scientific, experiential and cosmopolitan and ultimately leading the way to a systematic exploration of scientific philosophy.

Additionally, the present focus of comparative literature studies can also provide an important lesson for the digital humanities. This issue can be illustrated by discussing the following three aspects.

First, the future direction of these two disciplines should properly adopt a global vision instead of a local perspective in a spatial dimension, go beyond the boundaries of regional and cultural barriers, and eliminate the prejudices of geographical isolationism.

Second, the future direction of these two disciplines should properly adopt a trans-historical, prophetic perspective instead of a focus only on historiography in a temporal dimension, akin to the two-faced Janus, where one side thinks retrospectively about the past, and the other looks forward to the future, outlining future prospects, and focusing on possible solutions to current issues, rather than turning all efforts to the past, focusing on historical issues, becoming buried in old historical documents, obsessing about summarizing historical records, and completely ignoring the renewal of and new developments in this discipline. As Jean Bessière argues, “the basic paradigms of Comparative Literature studies still presuppose the unity of literature(s), which allows the study of literary differences. Those paradigms do not disassociate that unity of literature(s) from an obsession with the past and an inability to set up a vital relation with it whereas the future seems to remain as untouched as the past (Bessière, 2001, p. 13).” Indeed, indulging in the study of disciplinary history but being unable to build a bridge to connect the past with the present makes the exploration of future thought appear far from able to solve the problems of disciplinary history. Saussy (2005, p. 12) also encountered this problem, arguing that “the history of comparative literature as a university discipline is not one of steadily deepening understanding of a single object of study, but rather a history of attempts to locate that object of study.”

Indeed, for quite some time, the theoretical study that drove comparative literature toward being an independent discipline has been addicted to a kind of historical study and lacked direct investigation of the concepts and problems in this discipline in the present. The theory of comparative literature should embrace a change from a paradigm of diachronic, descriptive, history-oriented study to a type of synchronic, analytical, future-oriented study. Likewise, the discussion of the digital humanities as a new discipline should not be limited to a kind of descriptive study of its developmental history but should boldly try to predict and shape the discipline’s future. This is and will always be one of the most representative features and overwhelming advantages of this discipline.

Third, the future directions of these two disciplines should adopt a holistic perspective instead of restrictions stemming from the pride and prejudice of national centrism and disciplinary egoism and should be visionary while also fully aware of their problems and advantages. When the discipline of comparative literature tries to absorb theoretical resources from its disciplinary history, as well as that of other disciplines, the side effects show us that the incomplete digestion and assimilation of theoretical resources from different disciplines will inevitably result in the improper division, unclear categorization, and general disorganization of the disciplinary structure, which leads to the issue of the overlap and overabundance of theoretical content. Likewise, in the process of seeking a conscious theoretical construction, digital humanities scholars should try to avoid an inorganic superposition and blind combination of the previous theories to the current theoretical system of the discipline. This situation occurred during the development of comparative literature, and it will require us to apply an overall optimization of theoretical resources within and beyond the discipline, so as to establish these disciplines as more complete and refined systems than in the past.

Conclusion

The discipline of the digital humanities is aimed at solving the problems that have emerged in human history in a digital and humanistic way within both theoretical and practical dimensions and also strives to construct and explore a possible paradigm for future humankind utilizing digital technology and humanistic ideals. The similarities between the digital humanities and comparative literature make these two disciplines siblings. The enduring struggle of comparative literature to become a well-established discipline provides the digital humanities with valuable lessons. Full awareness of the disciplinary crises and issues that challenged the legitimacy of comparative literature during its long history of struggle for independence can also provide beneficial foresight for the digital humanities in the process of becoming a solid, fast-developing discipline. Based on Moretti’s argument, this author believes that the discipline of digital humanities may develop similarly to comparative/world literature and is large in size yet “not just its size”, as it is a “natural laboratory” for all sorts of theoretical experiments, including constructing a “computational humanism” based upon a type of “a global archive” (Moretti, 1950, p. 92).