1. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND ITS EVOLUTION
*Comparative study of literature is as old as literary criticism.
*Comparative literature is interdisciplinary in nature. It is the discipline of studying literature internationally across national boundaries, time periods, languages, genres and disciplines
*It is the study of more than one literature in relation to one another.

2. Definitions: *Henry Remak while defining comparative literature says, “ Comparative literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular country and the study of the relationships between literature on one hand and other areas of knowledge and belief such as the arts (i.e. painting, architecture, sculpture, music,), philosophy and history, the social sciences ( politics, economics, sociology) the sciences, religion etc. on the other. In brief, it is the comparison of literature with other spheres of human expression.”

3. *The beginning of the comparative literature studies could be traced to the mythologists and ancient literary historians in Germany and France. *It was realized that literatures do not remain confined to the political boundaries of their origin and they often interact. *The historical connections between modern European literatures and classical literatures are obvious.

4. *Comparative literature presumably had its name as such from a series of French anthologies published in They were titled as “Cours de literature comparee”. *However, Rene Wellek suggests that the German version of the term “Vergluchende Literaturgeschichte” first appeared in a book by Moriz Carriere in *The English usage of the term is attributed to Matthew Arnold who is claimed to have used the term in 1848.

5. *Rabindranath Tagore introduced the idea of comparative literature in India for the first time in his essay titled Visva-Sahitya in Tagore borrowed the idea from Goethe’s World Literature. *Tagore said, “ We must now free ourselves from the narrow parochialism and discover the image of mankind in World Literature.