Editing Comparative literature (section)

==Early work==
Work considered foundational to the discipline of comparative literature include Spanish humanist [[Juan Andrés]]'s work, Transylvanian Hungarian [[Hugó Meltzl|Hugo Meltzl]] de Lomnitz's scholarship, also the founding editor of the journal ''Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum'' (1877) and Irish scholar [[H.M. Posnett]]'s ''Comparative Literature'' (1886). However, antecedents can be found in the ideas of [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]] in his vision of "[[world literature]]" (''Weltliteratur)'' and [[Russian Formalists]] credited [[Alexander Veselovsky]] with laying the groundwork for the discipline. [[Viktor Zhirmunsky]], for instance, referred to Veselovsky as "the most remarkable representative of comparative literary study in Russian and European scholarship of the nineteenth century" (Zhirmunsky qtd. in Rachel Polonsky, ''English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance'' [Cambridge UP, 1998. 17]; see also David Damrosch<ref>{{citation
|last=Damrosch | first=David |author-link=David Damrosch |year=2006
|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_critical_studies/v003/3.1damrosch.html |title=Rebirth of a Discipline: The Global Origins of Comparative Studies |journal=Comparative Critical Studies |volume=3 |issue=1 | pages=99–112 |publisher=British Comparative Literature | doi=10.3366/ccs.2006.3.1-2.99 |access-date=Dec 18, 2011 |url-access=subscription }}</ref>
During the late 19th century, comparatists such as [[Fyodor Buslaev]] were chiefly concerned with deducing the purported [[Zeitgeist]] or "spirit of the times", which they assumed to be embodied in the literary output of each nation. Although many comparative works from this period would be judged chauvinistic, [[Eurocentric]], or even racist by present-day standards, the intention of most scholars during this period was to increase the understanding of other cultures, not to assert superiority over them (although politicians and others from outside the field sometimes used their works for this purpose).{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}}