In this review article, I have located the trajectory of development of
the notion of literary archeology and the third relation of comparative
literature, compared to influence and parallel ones, expounded by him in
his newly published book in 2016, The Third Notion of Comparative
Literature: the Possibility of Literary Archeology. My research shows
that he has conceived this notion more than a decade ago and it’s the
result of his lifetime endeavor on comparative literature in East Asia.
I have employed almost all his monographs to trace the gradual formation
of his ideas with two books as the focus, The Third Notion of
Comparative Literature: the Possibility of Literary Archeology and
The Image of Willow: The Material Exchange and the Ancient Chinese
and Japanese Literature. The former aims to construct the theory of
literary archeology as a renovated subject matter and the latter is
composed of the case studies on willow which provide abundant evidence
to illustrate his point.