The author of the present article deals with the problem of the compact explication of literature on the example of the two subjects he and some of his colleagues from the Institute of Slavonic Studies at Masaryk University (Brno) teach: World Literature for Slavists and Comparative Study of Slavonic Literatures. The author explains and interprets the problems of teaching such complex subjects and show the complications and obstacles the lecturer had to overcome in the past and still have to at present. Then he links these problems with some delicate questions of the so-called equality in literature demonstrated on the polemic concerning the team work on 20th-Century World Literatures, the term which aroused some biting critical remarks he then tried to satisfactorily answer.