Schools of Comparative Literature

The French School

• In the West two major schools of comparative
literature gained prominence. They are the
French school and the American school.
• The French school particularly dominated the
field of comparative literature from the beginning
of the 20th century until World War Two.
• It was characterized by an empiricist and
positivist approach (giving primacy to factual
evidence to prove the existence of a connection
between Work A and Work B).
• Its scope was too narrow and relied heavily on
factual evidence.
 The French School
• The French school defines comparative literature as a
branch of literary study which traces the mutual
relations between two nationally and linguistically
different literatures or texts.
• They place a strong emphasis on geographical and
linguistic boundaries in the comparison.
• In the French school of comparative literature, the
study of influences dominates.
• Comparatists of the French school distinguish between
direct / indirect influence, literary / non-literary
influence, positive / passive influence.
• The school is also obsessed with terminology:
(influence, reception, borrowing and imitation)
 The French School
• Scholars like Paul Van Tieghem examined works forensically,
looking for evidence of ‘origins’ and ‘influences’ between
works from different nations
• Tieghem (among other French scholars) adopted the binary
approach to comparative literature.
• The French school was predominantly marked by its 'études
binaires’.
• Comparison should take place between two elements only
• The French school adopts an author-centred approach to
comparison, therefore, oral, anonymous and folk literatures
are excluded from the province of comparative literature.
 Influence
• There are many arguments surrounding the term
'influence’
• One can define it simply as the movement (in a
conscious or unconscious way) of an idea, a
theme, an image, a literary tradition or even a
tone from one literary text into another.
• Some scholars further classify influence into
distinct types:
– Literary and non-literary Influence
– Direct and indirect influence
– Positive and passive influence.
 Literary and Non-literary Influence
• The concept of 'literary influence' originated in
the type of comparative study that seeks to trace
the mutual relation between two (or more)
literary works. This sort of study is the touchstone
of the French comparative literature.
• A comparative study between Bernard Shaw's
Pygmalion and that of Tawfiq Al-Hakeem, or
between Arabic and Persian poetry, for example,
is a good example of 'literary influence‘
 Literary and Non-literary Influence
• However, a comparative study between Rifa'a Al-
Tahtawi and French culture is based on the
principle of 'non-literary influence' (the influence
of French culture on the works of Al-Tahtawi).
• This type is ignored by the French school on the
ground that the influenced writer ('receiver')
does not absorb certain constituents of a literary
work into his or her own work but rather some
primary material (cultural) which he or she uses
in a literary work.
 Direct and Indirect Influence
• A direct influence between two literatures is marked
when there is an actual contact between writers.
• More specifically, a literary text can have no existence
before its writer's reading of another writer's 'original'
text or having direct contact with him/her.
• It is difficult, however, to prove this relation between
nationally different writers especially when some
writers do not mention (deliberately or unconsciously)
their debt, if such exists, to certain foreign writers or
texts.
 Direct and Indirect Influence
• The comparatists interested in emphasizing the
direct influence between different writers are
obliged to obtain documentary information
verifying an actual relation between them, such
as personal contacts or letters.
• By tracing direct influence, comparatists do not
enrich their national literatures with new literary
models as much as they accelerate a tendency
towards a blind chauvinistic nationalism, where
each critic attempts to manifest the superiority of
his/her national literatures to foreign ones.
 Direct and Indirect Influence
• In many cases influence can exist between
two different writers, without there being any
direct relation between them because of the
language barrier, but rather through specific
intermediaries such as individuals, journals or
periodicals of literary criticism, or societies of
literature, and translations. If there is any
influence of this sort, the French comparatists
take it to be indirect.
 Positive and Passive Influence
• The reception of a foreign work in a nation does
not necessarily mean that it is a good sign of
'positive influence': this would require proof that
the foreign work helped develop in another
country a successful work within its national
literature.
• In some cases a country's reception of foreign
works helps only in letting its people know more
about other cultures, as reflected in such works.
 Positive and Passive Influence
• Some foreign works may have a passive influence upon
a national writer, in that he may feel compelled to
write in a reaction to an affront to highly revered
national figures in foreign literature.
• Example: Cleopatra, the ancient Egyptian queen, was
portrayed in many western works as a seductress who
won victory to her country by seducing Anthony and
other military leaders. Ahmad Shawqi, the renowned
Egyptian author, responded by writing Masra’
Cleopatra. His portrayal of Cleopatra manifested her as
a striking example of loyalty and self-sacrifice for the
sake of her country's welfare and dignity.
 Reception
• Influence and reception are not unrelated; no
influence can take place between foreign writers
without the reception of a literary work outside
its national borders. That is, reception can be
taken as a step on the road to influence.
• The process of reception is not coincidental or
mechanical but rather systematic, as it takes
place only when the foreign works bring in
cultural and ideological modes that accord with
or help evolve those of a nation.
 Reception
• Example: Edward FitzGerald's English translation
of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat would not be given
so much attention in the West unless it fulfilled a
need for Khayyam's new trends of pessimism and
mysticism.
• On the contrary, the Arabic translations of certain
Greek works during the Renaissance were not
celebrated much in the Arabic world, containing
as they did social and religious concepts that
were inconsistent with its Islamic and Christian
culture.
 Fields of Study
• Literary Schools and Genres
• Ideological Echoes
• Image Echoes
• Verbal Echoes
• Human Models and Heroes
 Literary Schools and Genres
• From the 18th century until now, the world has witnessed
the emergence of various literary schools or movements
(Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism,
Expressionism, Surrealism, Modernism, Post-modernism)
• The principal literary genres: plays, poems, novels exist in
literatures around the world.
• Comparatists base their studies on raising and answering a
number of questions such as:
– What are the similarities and differences between two
international literatures in using a specific school or genre?
– Where and when did this school or genre first appear? And how
did it find its way into other literatures?
– What was behind its change or evolution? Did the boundaries of
language, place and time have anything to do with this?
 Ideological Echoes
• The ideological history of a nation is generally formed
by the history of philosophy, religion, ethics, culture
and politics.
• Literature harbours all kinds of ideas, which are viewed
differently by different writers.
• Religious ideas in French literature, for example, are
treated in various ways: some writers defend religion
or certain doctrines, while others question them.
Cálvin, Pascal, Rousseau and Montaigne are among the
theological writers whose distinguished works have
found their wide echoes outside the frontiers of
France.
 Ideological Echoes
• Some philosophical ideas are reflected in
literature. A great deal of the philosophy of Hegel
and Locke have found their way into many of the
European literary works.
• Philosophical ideas are not the same in various
literary forms, but are modified in a way that
serves the writer's literary goal. German
Existentialism, for instance, would not have
gained popularity in France, if Sartre had not
prepared the French public's taste with his novels
and plays.
 Ideological Echoes
• Voltaire's imitation of Pope's view of man's
dual nature, or mysticism in Arabic and
Persian literature, or 'existentialism' in
German and French literature, for example, all
are proper provinces for comparative
literature studies.
 Image Echoes
• The treatise on image in comparative literature
has two main points of departure.
– First, a country's image in a foreign writer's work (e.g.,
Twain's portrayal of Egypt, along with some other
Arab countries, in The Innocents Abroad or Voltaire's
image of the English) or literature (Spain in Arabic
literature or Germany in French literature).
– Second, the image of a certain character or of an
object (women in Arabic and Persian literature, or
nature in English and French literature).
 Verbal Echoes
• The focus is on the ‘give’ and ‘take’ between languages.
• Foreign words go beyond being mere sources of
enrichment for the legacy of the receiving language;
they become indicative of definite social and cultural
values with many connotations.
• Languages, despite their variation, are the
cornerstones of cultural and social reciprocity between
nations.
- Aramaic Words in Arabic language
- A Glossary of Spanish and Portuguese words derived
from Arabic language
 Verbal Echoes
• The Canon of Avicenna (al-Qānūn fī al-Ṭibb), a literary
medical book, has always been a primary source for
'practitioners' of medicine in different parts of the
world, and of which many of the terms have been
adopted by various foreign languages.
• Doing such studies is not easy, for verbal echoes study
demands, besides vast knowledge of different
international cultures, traditions, politics and histories,
a great ability of testing these within certain linguistic
contexts in two or more international literary texts,
with a view to deciding the kind of historical relations
between them.
 Human Models and Heroes
• Certain characters and heroes are used in eastern and
western literatures
– There are characters attributed to ancient myths such as:
Pygmalion (as in Shaw's Pygmalion, Ovid's Les
Metamorphosis and John Marston's The Metamorphoses
of Pygmalion's Image).
– Religion has provided all literatures with such figures as:
Noah, Joseph, Moses, Cain, Abel and the devil. (The devil
features in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Victor Hugo’s Fall
of the Devil, and M. Lermontov's dramatic poem "The
Devil“
– Some characters are taken from popular myths, such as:
Alaa Eddin and Shahrazad in The Arabian Nights. Don Juan
is another example.
– Other characters are adopted by western and eastern
writers from history (like Alexander, Cleopatra, Arthur,
Julius Caesar, etc.)
 Human Models and Heroes
• All the aforementioned types of characters vary from
one literary text to the other.
• For example, Moliere's Don Juan is made to be a social
satirist and a benevolent man altogether; Byron assigns
Don Juan to convey his own philosophy: namely,
detesting the haughtiness of society, its rigid and
arbitrary traditions and calling for free love - a sacred
love. In this Don Juan appears as a social victim and
rebel.
• Some characters, however, do not deviate from their
original outlines. Shahrazad, for example, figures in
Arabic and western literatures as a symbol of the
heart's triumph over mind.
 The French School
• The French school is deemed by many scholars to have reached a
dead end due to a number of issues.
• First , French theorists failed to define the terminology and
methodology of comparative literature.
• French theorists were obsessed with external impacts of the world
on literary works (causality) rather than internal aesthetic
properties of texts.
• Third, they examined literatures across linguistic barriers, rather
than cultural ones. So the focus of comparative literature from a
French point of view is the comparison of two works written in two
different languages, but not the works of two writers writing in
English even if they belong to two different cultures. A study of
Beowulf and Paradise Lost is not acceptable, because although the
former is in Anglo-Saxon, technically Anglo-Saxon is an early variant
of modern English, so part of the same literary system.
 The American School
• Appeared in the second half of the 20th century.
• Appeared as a reaction to the French school
• The American school set to avoid the chauvinistic
nationalism that marked the French school. It stressed the
‘depoliticization’ of comparative study
• It moved beyond linguistic and 'political boundaries’
• It was more closely aligned with the original internationalist
visions of Goethe and H. M. Posnett looking for examples of
universal human "truths" based on the literary archetypes
that appeared throughout literatures from all times and
places.
• Despite difference in language and culture, all nations have
certain things in common.
 Interdisciplinarity
• One of the founding fathers of the American
school, Henry Remak, states that:
Comparative Literature is the study of literature
beyond the confines of one particular country, and the
study of the relationships between literature on the one
hand, and other areas of knowledge and belief such as
the arts [e.g. painting, sculpture, architecture, music],
philosophy, history, the social sciences [e.g. politics,
economics, sociology], the sciences, religion, etc., on
the other.
 Interdisciplinarity
• Disregarding the distinctions used by the French
school, the American comparatists fastened their
attention on constructing a model of an
'interdisciplinary work.‘
• Bassnett states that: "the American perspective on
comparative literature was based from the start on
ideas of interdisciplinarity and universalism."
• This perspective threw over another basic principle of
the French School, namely binary study, in regarding
that the study of affinities and differences between
two international literatures was just one angle of the
subject*
 Parallelism and Intertextuality
• The American school paid no attention to the concept of
influence in comparative literature as it was embraced by
the French school; it replaced it with concepts of
'parallelism' and 'intertextuality.‘
• It does not give importance to the link of causality.
• It gives no importance to influence. There is a possibility of
dealing with literary texts not being in contact of
whatsoever kind but having similar contexts or realities.
• If influence exists between literary texts, the importance
does not lie in the influence itself but rather in the context.
If the context does not allow for influence to be effective,
influence will never take place in the first place.
 The Parallelism Theory
• The 'Parallel' theory is derived from the idea of similarities
in humanity's social and historical evolution, which means
harmony in the process of literary development.
• Any study of parallelism claims that there are affinities
between the literatures of different peoples whose social
evolution is similar, regardless of whether or not there is
any mutual influence or direct relation between them.
• Example: political and social relations during the feudal
period resulted in similar patterns of thought, art and
literature in different parts of the world.
• The comparatist seeks to determine the bases and
premises which underline common features between
literatures and writers, or the affiliation of a phenomenon
with a specific pattern.
 The Intertextuality Theory
• 'Intertextuality' simply means the reference of a
text to another.
• It is the relation between two or more texts at a
level which affects the way or ways of reading the
new text (the 'intertext,‘ allowing into its own
contexture implications, echoes or influences of
other texts).
• A deeper analysis shows the phenomenon to be a
melting-pot into which designated components
of the influencing text are intermixed with the
content of the influenced text.
 Intertextuality
• This is very much related to Roland Barthes’ theory of the
text being a ‘network’ of quotations from various texts,
cultures, disciplines...etc.
• The ways of reading or interpreting the literary text expand
the province of ‘intertextuality’; each critic or individual
reader takes a certain position, which is of course
associated with his or her culture, language and
experience, from the text. This renders the text, over time,
open to various interpretations.
• Literature is a continuous and an ongoing process of
reworking and refashioning old texts.
• Old texts turn into some sort of raw materials used for the
creation of new ones.
 The American School
• The American School of comparative literature
has been criticized for a number of issues:
– It confuses comparative with general literature on the
ground that both are involved with studying one
subject (literature).
– The determination of comparative literature's
boundaries is marked by 'duality' in relating literature
to other arts and sciences - a duality which makes the
subject's province too vast to investigate and come up
with accurate conclusions.
– The failure of the American comparatists to avoid the
problem of extreme nationalism, which has marked
the French School and which they have intensely
opposed.