Larbaud critique du Précis d’histoire littéraire de l’Europe depuis la Renaissance de Paul Van Tieghem ou comment faire de la littérature comparée

Critiquing Paul Van Tieghem’s Précis d’histoire littéraire de l’Europe depuis la Renaissance, Larbaud imagines how to create a perfect work of comparative literature. One must note the chronology of trends in thinking, form, and style, and develop clear and precise descriptions instead of creating portrait-judgments (portraits-jugements). Not only that, it is crucial to produce a sort of “literary geography” and use maps as well as synoptic tables for such a work.