Comparative Literature 3

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The American School

The founding father of this school, which appeared in the second half of
the twentieth century, Henry Remak, states that "comparative literature should
not be regarded as a discipline on its own but rather as a connecting link
between subjects or 'subject areas.' A comparison thus can be made between two
or more different literatures and between literature and other fields of cognition
(music, painting, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, sociology, psychology,
religion, chemistry, mathematics, physics, etc)." (46) In this Remak leaves it all to
the comparatist to lay the grounds for his or her study, which should not be
involved in the problem of 'nationalism.' It is the 'depoliticization' of
comparative study then which makes the American perspective on comparative
literature different from the French one.

Though some critics claim that it is an offshoot of modernist literary


criticism, the American perspective is actually a formulation of earlier
definitions of the subject. In the 1890s Charles Mills tried to draw a distinctive
line of American comparative literature (not differing much from the line drawn
by Matthew Arnold, H. Macaulay Posnett and Arthur Marsh) by assuming that
the subject "should be seen as 'nothing more or less' than literature philology...,
by insisting on the importance of psychology, anthropology, linguistics, social
science, religion and art in the study of literature." (47)

Putting aside all the distinctions used by the French School, the American
comparatists fastened their attention on constructing a model of an
'interdisciplinary work.' The sole aim beyond this model is to do away with
chauvinistic nationalism, mainly brought about by considering literature in the
light of linguistic or 'political boundaries.' Despite difference in language and
culture, all nations have certain things in common. Hence, as Bassnett sums it
up, "the American perspective on comparative literature was based from the
start on ideas of interdisciplinarity and universalism."(48) Furthermore, 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, and that, as
Gayley proposed, "the study of a single literature may be just as scientifically
comparative literature if it seeks the reason and law of the literature in the
psychology of the race or of humanity." (49)
The attitude of early scholars towards comparative literature was
quintessentially humanistic. Posnett, Galey's contemporary, linked the subject to
"the social evolution, individual evolution, and the influence of the environment
on the social and individual life of man." (50) In this way, the influences between
international literatures are ignored and an emphasis is placed on humanity's
collective achievements through time and place and across disciplinary lines - a
view which seems to break down the barriers drawn by the French School
between the interrelated elements of one single subject, which is literature.
Arthur Richmond Marsh's definition of the subject was distinctive in relating it
to pure literary criticism rather than to history.(51)

Paying no attention to the influence principle in comparative literature


and relating literature to science and art creates new fields of study different
from those of the French School. Most significant among these are
'parallelism' and 'intertextuality.'

(1) The 'Parallelism' Theory:

The Egyptian-born American critic Ihab Hassan has severely criticized


the comparative literary study based on the principle of 'influence,' believing it
to be inaccurate and ambiguous. He maintains that the impact of Rousseau or
Byron, for instance, on the various Romantic attitudes in late 19 th century
Europe is in fact not based on the presumed idea of literary influence or
imitation, but rather on more than one factor. Above all, the circumstances
surrounding both the 'influencing' and 'influenced' writers were similar. In the
second, there was an urgent need in different parts of the world for revolutionary
reactions against the rigid, restrictive rules of Classicism in literature. There
would be no room therefore for Goethe's story Die Lieden des Jungen Werthers
or Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as examples, in
foreign countries, if people were not prepared (mentally or culturally) for
absorbing all these works' ideas, philosophies or concepts. These factors have
prompted Ihab Hassan, and other American critics, to suggest 'parallelism' as an
alternative to the theory of 'influence' in comparative literature. (52)

The 'Parallel' theory has been adopted by many comparatists in America


and Eastern Europe. Konrad, a Russian comparatist, sees that this 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. To give an
example, political and social relations during the feudal period resulted in
similar patterns of thought, art and literature in different parts of the world. (53)
Beyond study, 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. Although this theory is opposed by some
critics, on the account that literatures differ according to their discovering
national and historical backgrounds, it is significant in the common properties of
literary phenomena, whether related or not, and the national and historical
attributes of each phenomenon.

(2) The 'Intertextuality' Theory:

'Intertextuality' simply means the reference of a text to another. But the


term has been elaborated upon at length. M. Enani defines it as 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). (54) A deeper analysis shows the
phenomenon to be a melting-pot into which designated components of the
influencing text (or 'hypotext,' as Gennette calls it) are intermixed with the
content of the influenced text (hypertext). This involves the phenomenon with
what is socalled 'transtextuality', across textuality. (55) Roland Barthes takes the
same position in looking upon the text as a 'network'. In interpreting the text the
author is no longer 'the great originator' or 'the creative genius,' but as someone
whose task is to put together in a certain literary form and structural pattern
'linguistic raw materials.' (56) Literature in this way is no more or less than a
reworking of frequently-dealt-with materials, with a certain amount of change.
The story of Oedipus, the quest for the Holy Grail, King Solomon's Mines, The
Waste Land, Heart of Darkness, Don Quixote, and several other stories and
themes, are all indicative of "the ways in which a particular story or myth can be
repeated in different ways." (57) This view may be adopted from the idea that "a
writing surface [is like] a wax tablet on which the original has been partially or
wholly reworked, written over success-fully."(58)

As critical appraisals of any phenomenon are (in)famous for yielding


variant views, 'intertextuality,' too, is made to imply further meanings. Without
referring directly to the phenomenon, Bakhtin has hinted at the overlapping of
textual forms in the novel upon which both Julia Kristeva (who originated the
term) and R. Barthes have relied in their approaches to 'intertextuality'. In the
preamble of his book Desire in Language (trans. by Kristeva) Leon S. Roudiz
refutes the idea of 'influence' between two writers and the sources of a literary
work, and takes 'intertextuality' to be "a mutual exchange of the sign system
between texts," which means the use of one stylistic system in lieu of another. (59)

Despite variation, the approaches to the phenomenon may meet at an


essential point, namely that all the literary ingredients ("Bits of codes, formulae,
rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc.") (60) drawn from other
familiar works into a text are modulated in different ways to serve the writer's
literary goal beyond it. A writer may try to blend another text into his own, yet
the alignment between the two texts can never be entirely broken: there is
always another text that strives to exist under the 'hypertext.' Noticing this,
Enani urges "the reader or the writer (or both)... to refer strongly to the other
text for an understanding of the new one ..." (61) But this is exemplified at length:
"Eliot published a set of explanatory notes with The Waste Land which locate it
in frames of reference external to the text of the poem;" (62) many critical
discourses about Joyce's Ulysses have related the novel to the narrative works
of which certain aspects are mixed with its content; and Anne Muller's
"Flaubert's Salammbô: Exotic Text and Inter Text" is a study which reveals the
exotic morphemes used in Salammbô to stand as variants for familiar ones in
Madame Bovary. For example, the use of 'Zaimph' (an out of use word meaning
'gown') in the place of these frequent signifiers: 'voile,' 'manteau,' 'vêtement' or
'robe' "generates a description in two codes, sacred and vestmentary, motivated
respectively by its metonymic relationship with the goddess – therefore sacred
object – and its capacity as article of clothing." (63)

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. Since literary forms and human experience are known for their
recurring change throughout history, the text then becomes susceptible to
various interpretations or readings. This is stressed in Antony Easthope's view
that "the text has an identity, but that identity is always relational." (64) In one
sense, the text is traversed again and again by various readers or critics across
time and place. Evidence of this is the innumerable different approaches to
Shakespeare's Hamlet, from the moment it appeared till now.

Enani, as a well-versed translator of many English works into Arabic and


vice versa, gives room for
'intertextuality' in the process of translation. In translating a text the translator is
often tempted to refer the idioms and expressions of the original text to their
equivalents in the target culture. Inasmuch as this may 'violate' the original, it
gives rise to a new text, still related to the original. Enani creates a professed
case of 'intertextuality' in his Comparative Moments through a comparison
between Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet and Eliot's
The Waste Land (by quoting certain parts from each one) and their literary
translations by Lewis Awad. Nabil Raghib and M. S. Farid. Though Eliot's
poem has a dynamic intertextuality with Shakespeare's plays (as Eliot uses, for
example, 'chair' in the place of 'barge' and 'marble' instead of 'water,' with regard
to the connotation of words, to convey his idea of the loss of the glorious past
and of love), Awad's translation of these two texts from English into Arabic
creates a case of 'intertextuality' as well. Awad's choice of ‫( الكرسي‬al-kursi) and
‫( الشراع‬al-shira') for both 'chair' and 'barge' and ‫(العرش الوضاء‬al-arsh el-wadda')
for 'a burnished throne' (an image maintained in both the Qurän and the Bible)
gives The phenomenon becomes more complex as literary texts come to refer to
arts (music, painting, sculpture), applied sciences (mathematics, engineering),
natural sciences (physics, chemistry), religion, cinema, and so on. Michael
Holquist asserts that comparative literature's development as a discipline in the
twentieth century has affected other academic disciplines in most of Europe. (66)
Literature, in a sense, resembles a body of water on whose surface are reflected
various forms of knowledge. Michelle E. Bloom's dissertation hypothesizes that
"the physical properties of wax constitute a useful conceptual framework for
reading wax fictions and other texts." (67) The definition of 'wax fiction' centers
on the idea of "dissolution," with regard to "several figurative senses, especially
psychological (insanity) and discursive (narrative incoherence)." (68) As 'wax' can
be turned into solid and liquid, this process is suggested as a 'paradigm' for
literary movements in fact of their rise and decline. Bloom shows that Shaw's
Pygmalion (based on Ovid's myth of making a female creature out of a statue) is
a paradigm of many modern wax fictions such as: Champfleury's "L' Homme
aux Figures de Cire," Balzac's "Le Chef-d'oeuvre Inconnu," E.T. Hoffmann's
"Der Sandmann" and many such narratives in which statues assume life. This
wax case is also used in the cinema, such as in the "Hollywood horror films" of
the 1930s. (69) The dissertation ends with stating that though the progress of
technology in the last few decades has caused, for instance, 'robots' to supplant
wax figures, the wax museums are still relied upon in substantiating "human
desires and fantasies." (70) Zola's Le Docteur Pascal is argued to be related to
Darwin's "theory of heredity" and H. James' The Turn of the Screw to "the
stream of consciousness (experimental psychology)." (71) On the contrary,
Viviane Casimir (in "Savoir as a New Space of Communication: Emile Zola and
Henry James," a Ph. D. dissertation) challenges the view of the impact of
science upon literature, rendering it to just a "cultural receptacle," by proposing
that the two fields communicate in sharing "common modes of thinking"
('Savoir')" to create particular models, themes or paradigms. (72) This turns
intertextuality between science and literature to "interdiscursivity." It is on this
ground that Le Doctreur Pascal (which "problematizes the "living" through the
question of similarity)" is put in relation to "natural history/biology," while The
Turn of the Screw (questioning "the truth as a process of seeing)" is related to
"pragmatism." (73)

In conclusion, the American School of comparative literature, though


largely welcomed in different parts of the world, has not escaped criticism. To
start with, 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 final and most serious
fault is the failure of the American comparatists to avoid the problem of rabid
nationalism, which has marked the French School and which they have
intensely opposed, as they have shown in considering their literature superior to
all others. (74)

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