Uses, benefits, comparisons

Abstract

In this introduction to the volume “Benefits from comparison”, its editors, starting with the etymological meaning of ‘culture’ as ‘cultivation’, the apicultural metaphors of bee pastures and hive products, and both legal and everyday meanings of ‘uses’ and ‘benefits’, outline a diagnosis of the present state and perspectives of comparative literature. Comparative studies of the beginning of the 21st century fortunately do not absolutize neither the local, the regional, the national, nor the worldwide or universal. But they should also try to strike a balance between the search for new ideas, new fields of study and new theories, on one side, and rethinking of its disciplinary traditions, on the other. Presented volume of essays is aimed to showing possibilities of such a balance.