Who is and who is not a comparatist, what are comparative literary studies and what it does not cope with

The author of the present study reflects upon the contemporary state of comparative literary studies and its perspectives. She repeats its elementary aims which were – in the stream on new methods and approaches – rather forgotten: on the basis of confrontation and comparison to deeper study a literary artefact and literary process. There are basically two ways: the widening of the platform of comparative literary studies by the application of new approaches and its transcendence towards other disciplines, such as area and cultural studies, literary feminism, imagology or cultural anthropology. Tertium datur: on the basis of classical concept of literary comparative studies as a textual comparison to internationalize the literary process through the accentuation of supranational contexts of national literatures which is extremely useful in literary history. The future of comparative literary studies might consist in the preservation of its methodological heterogeneity, plurality of approaches and a sufficiently wide framework which does not limit, but at the same time keeps its boundaries.