The focus of this article is a journal that may, in the words of Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă, allow us to see Transylvania as “the birthplace of comparative literature” (92). Originally entitled Összehasonlitó Irodalomtörténelmi Lapok in its founding year of 1877, from 1879 this journal replaced its Hungarian title with its better-known Latin moniker: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (hereafter ACLU).1 In recent debates in comparative literature, this journal has been celebrated on account of its seemingly radical and progressive polyglotism: its decision to publish articles in multiple languages and its apparently laudable aim to protect so-called “minor” and “endangered” languages and literatures. What this celebration has lacked, however, is a critical examination of the ACLU’s claims to polyglotism, along with a more differentiated picture of its early history and especially the aesthetic and epistemological debates that contributed to its formation.
In Creolizing the Modern...
