Literary Criticism
Page 8
American scholars of Comparative Literature believed that the study of similarity was
introduced by the schools, but actually it was reestablished by the American school. Moreover,
Cao (2013: xxiii) deliberated into three parts. The first is the negation of the French school to
analogy studies since the French school excluded analogy studies. The second is the reason
why the American school emphasizes the transnational and
interdisciplinary nature of
Comparative Literature that comparing the products of different national literatures,
comparing between literatures and other subjects, and sorting out the common aesthetic
values and the universal laws in literature and literary development. Finally, the focus of the
American school is the study of thematology,
typology, stylistics, and so on. Among them,
thematology is the study of writers of different countries and their different treatment on
the same subject, which
includes the research on motif, situation, and image.
The American School promotes largely tw the r es, na ely, ‘Parallel s ’ and
‘Intertextual ty’. The the ry f ‘Parallel s ’ is derived from the idea of similarities in
hu an ty’s s c al and h st r cal ev lut n, that s, har ny n the process of literary
development (Enani, 2005: 41; Tӧtӧsy de Zepetnek, 1998: 16).
Many comparatists in America and Eastern Europe had adopted The ‘Parallel’ the ry.
According to 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. There are similarities between the literatures of different peoples
whose social evolution is analogous, irrespective of existence of mutual influence or direct
relation between them found in study of parallelism (Short, 1986: 156). In advance, the
comparatist seeks to define the origins and evidences
which emphasize collective
structures between works and authors, or the association of a occurrence with a
particular form. this theory account that literatures are unlike rendering to their
determining national and historical backgrounds, it
is important in the common
properties of literary phenomena to related with the national and historical attributes of each
phenomenon.
Parallelism theory does not give importance to the link of causality and 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.
This term “ ntertextual ty” was established by the poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in the
1960s, and s nce then t’s been w dely accepted by p st dern l terary cr t cs and
theoreticians (Allen, 2000: 3). The study of this terminology was a response to Ferdinand de