Vprašanje o literarnosti prizadeva tudi identiteto literarne teorije kot avtonomne discipline. Literarnost ni niti invariantni snop "notranjih" lastnosti vseh besedil, ki veljajo za literarna, niti ...samo "zunanja", družbena konvencija. Opredelimo jo lahko kot učinek besedila v literarnem sistemu, mogoč samo na podlagi paradigem in konvencij iz literarnega kanona.
The works of critics as dissimilar, in almost every other respect, as Shklovsky, Tynianov, Vodicka, Paul de Man, etc. show the usefulness of “comparative approach” to the general concept of ...“literariness”, however heterogeneously it may be put to work. The author of the essay argues that the distinction Literariness vs. Literature corresponds with the idea of autonomous worlds of literariness from the typological point of view in the global inequality; it presents the field of “comparative literature” as a way of reading and re-reading in unexpected ways of devices and vices. Chinese literariness as a typological, historically closed and theoretically productive in-between of Sinology and comparative literature.