Interkulturowość – literatura – komparatystyka
Interculturality – Literature – Comparative Literature

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the present-day situation of the discipline of comparative literature, particularly the question of translation and theory of translation in an intercultural context. A general discussion on interculturality, multiculturality (after, i.a., Daniel-Henri Pageaux) and translation (George Steiner, Susan Bassnett, Yves Chevrel, Emily Apter) leads to the conclusion that these concepts have been crucial to the comparative literature during the last decades of the twentieth century. Finally, the author distinguishes two types of comparative studies: ‘traditional’ comparative literature and comparative cultural studies. In the field of ‘traditional’ comparative literature the translation appears as a marginal problem, whereas in the area of comparative cultural studies, at the time of the ‘translation turn’, it is understood as a main source of innovation and as a confrontation with otherness. In this perspective, the literary translation, which becomes an ethical problem, is related to ‘linguistic hospitality’ (Paul Ricoeur’s concept).

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