What is the difference between French and American schools of Comparative literature

Question no 2: What is the difference between French and American schools of Comparative literature?

Answer: Comparative literature is characterized by its fluid, dynamic and non-congealed substance and is interested in the interaction of dialectic history and literary expression with the ever changing scenario of socio-political and economic changes in the world. Cultural context is extremely important as far as reception and understanding of a comparative perspective goes and since literature is plural there is more than one influence that works on it.
When one considers the French School of Comparative Literature what is important is to remember that it does not designate itself to a particular nationality or language used for the discourse it presents but rather it is a general orientation that is given to the subject matter. The main focus is on solid research before interpretations are made and also a chronological and systematic approach. What time and again has crept into the study of literature is the study of ‘influences’ or what influences a particular work of art. At first it was cause and effect that was taken up by Paul Van Tieghem and later in the works of Lagos Katona the emphasis is on the study of sources and later shifts to originality. However, in the French school the term ‘influence’ has been gradually replaced by ‘reception’. It is not the emitter that is now focused on but the receptor; from author centric to reader centric.

(1)Reception studies
Van Tieghem was an indirect user of the theory of reception as though he may not have used the term ‘reception’ he focused on the process of communication. Yves Chevrel on the other hand focuses mainly on influence studies and its aspects like the ‘influence of X’, ‘knowledge of X’ on the neutral level. On the level of the emitter he is concerned with the fortune, reputation, diffusion and radiation whereas on the level of the receptor he focuses on reaction, critique, opinion, reading and orientation. He also charts another category that deal with the reproduction of a text viz. its face, reflection, mirror, image, resonance, echo or mutation. Thus he charts out the different aspects one can explore in the area of influence in literature.
Reception studies deals also with the transformation of a text like its translation and adaptation and well as the internal aesthetic codes of literary systems that are unconsciously linked with the prevalent ideology. The hypothesis in most cases is that literary systems have their own course of evolution and if a foreign element is introduced it causes a ripple and disturbs the system. The role of media too comes to be looked at though the geographical area covered by these studies is not large. France is taken to be the receptor while the other groups are England, US, Germany and Russia which again is a very Eurocentric approach.
(2)French comparatist have focused considerably less on thematic aspects as by nature this is more matter dominated. Thematology as a word hints more at a methodology deriving some concepts from the psychoanalytic schools and Bakhtin’s stylistic criticism. Bakhtin studies intertextuality and thematic-formal study of the carnavalesque.

Michel Riffaterre on the other hand deals with the architectural composition of systems where even single lexical or syntactic components can provide a clue to the total system.“Each ‘theme’ therefore can be studied as inscribed in a network of multiple signifying systems, as well as the place where the systems intercross. And yet the study would be incomplete, in fact impossible, if the reader’s response, which is always variable, is not given due importance.”

The school of Annales has also dwelt on the thematic aspects of literary studies and in converse to formalist critics have analysed the nature of relations between social phenomena and cultural expression. The key concepts in the themalogical study of literature are: (a) researches on the imaginary (b) studies centred on one or the other of the great ‘universal’ thematic (c) studies in typology (d) work centred on themalogical concepts. However, in comparison to studies in themalogy done in the United State, France tends to lag behind.
Studies in myths are more focused upon where they are considered as chiefly literary phenomena and are studied as revealing veiled symbolic and dramatic structures that correspond to the changing scenario of the society. The study of images or imagology too is given a lot of importance. This study focuses on the images that are manifested in literary works which are from different cultural settings and areas. However, again the field is limited to a few regions which are Great Britain, US, Germany and Russia with certain parts of Italy as well.
The American School:

The American school came as a reaction against the French school.
It's main aim was to depoliticize comparative literature by going beyond the political borders of literary texts.
It is mainly based on universalism and interdisciplinarity.

It is has mainly two fields of study:

Parallelism:
• 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.

Intertextuality: 
It is the reference of a given text to another text.
New texts are superposed on old texts.
New texts (Hypertexts) are always read under the light of old texts (Hypotexts).
Literature is a continuous and an ongoing process of reworking and refashioning old text.
Old texts turn into some sort of raw materials used for the creation of new ones.

The French and American Schools of Comparative Literature
The French and American schools are quite similar as far as their groupings, diversity and liberalization go. But there are minor differences especially stemming from the lack of a truly comparative perspective in the French School. The American school has a blend of a wide range of things which at times makes it appear diffuse; on the other hand, the French school tries to appear limited and restrictive but the confined methodology causes its scope to shrink considerably.
From Brunel, Pichois and Rousseau’s viewpoint, the main thrust of the American school is its openness to the world at large that facilitates a broader field of study and though conscious of its Western tradition it does not fail to be tolerant of other cultures. Furthermore, it studies works right from antiquity to contemporary literature while being ready to experiment even though they do not demean the traditional works of literature. Assumptions are constantly questioned even though this may not be a totally modern sense of studying things.
However, the French school too has individuals who are exceptions like Paul Hazard who combines imaginative daring with learning and so has an ideal blend of temperament to take on comparative studies. Another trend of the French school is literary history as per the comparative perspective where an author is focused on as well as his work. One must remember though that the survival of comparative literature in France was as comparative and general literature. The text is the centre of its research which keeps in mind the aspects of intertexuality, context and history.

Write a detail how Comparative literature has established itself as a discipline

  Comparative literature
Question no 1: Write a detail how Comparative literature has established itself as a discipline?

Answer: Origins and Development of Comparative Literature

First Appearance of the Term:
Susan Bassnett in her Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction states:
There is General agreement that comparative literature acquired its name from a series French anthologies used for the teaching of literature, published in 1816 and entitled Cours de littérature comparée. In an essay discussing the origins of the term, René Wellek notes that this title was 'unused and unexplained' but he also shows how the term seems to have crept into use through 1820s and 1830s in France. He suggests that the German version of the term, 'vergleichende Literaturgeschichte', first appeared in a book by Moriz Carrière in 1854, while the earliest English usage is attributed to Matthew Arnold, who referred to 'comparative literatures' in the plural in a letter of 1848. (page 12)

Why the use of the adjective "comparative"?
At the time, the scientific boom has led to the rise of comparatism as a method or an approach in the philosophy of science where a given thing is not judged to be true or false in itself but as related to something else. Comparatism was the spirit of the age. Comparatism was the methodology employed in most disciplines and literature was no exception.

The Historical Context Undermining the Birth of Comparative Literature: 
According to Susan Basnnett, "The term 'comparative literature' appeared in an age of transition. In Europe, as nations struggled for independence - from the Ottoman Empire, from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from France, from Russia - and new nation states came into being, national identity (whatever that was) was inextricably bound up with national culture (however that was defined)." (page 20)

The Mechanisms Undermining the Birth of Comparative Literature: 
What becomes apparent when we look at the origins of comparative literature is that the term predated the subject. People used the phrase 'comparative literature' without having clear ideas about what it was. With the advantages of retrospection, we can see that 'comparative' was set against 'national', and whilst the study of 'national' literatures risked accusations of partisanship, the study of 'comparative' literature carried with it a sense of transcendence of the narrowly nationalistic. In other words, the term was used loosely but was associated with the desire for peace in Europe and for harmony between nations. Central to this idealism was also the belief that comparison could be undertaken on mutual basis. (Susan Basnnett, P21).

Comparative literature was a reaction to nationalism in Europe. 

The Crisis of Comparative Literature:
Comparative literature as a term seems to arouse strong passions, both for and against.
Against:
• As early as 1903, Benedetto Croce argued that comparative literature was a non-subject, contemptuously dismissing the suggestion that it might be seen as a separate discipline. He discussed the definition of comparative literature as the exploration of of 'the vicissitudes, alterations, developments and reciprocal differences' of themes and literary ideas across literatures, and concluded that 'there is no study more arid than researches of this sort'. This kind of work, Croce maintained, is to be classified 'in the category of erudition purely and simply'. Instead of something called comparative literature, he suggested that the proper object of study should be literary history. (Basnnett, P03)
For:
• {…} François Jost claimed that 'national literature' cannot constitute an intelligible field of study because of its arbitrarily limited perspective', and that comparative literature: "represents more than an academic discipline. It is an overall view of literature, of the world of letters, a humanistic ecology, a literary Weltanschauung, a vision if the cultural universe, inclusive and comprehensive.

• Comparative literature … will make high demands on the linguistic proficiencies of our scholars. It asks for a widening of perspectives, a suppression of local and provincial sentiments, not easy to achieve (Wellek & Warren)

While opponents of comparative literature suggested that comparative literature is nothing but another name for literary history; proponents of comparative literature argued that it is much wider in scope and that it provides us with the bigger picture instead of the narrow perspective of literary history.

The Dead End of Comparative Literature:
'We spend far too much of our energy talking … about Comparative Literature and not enough of it comparing the literature,' complained Harry Levin in 1969, urging more practical work and less agonizing about the theory. But Levin's proposal was already out of date; by the late 1970s a new generation of high-flying graduate students in the West had turned to Literary Theory, Women Studies, Semiotics, Film and Media Studies and Cultural Studies as the radical subject choices, abandoning Comparative Literature to what were increasingly seen as dinosaurs from a liberal - humanist prehistory. (Basnnett, P05)
Development of Comparative Litetrature Outside Europe:
• Yet even as that process was underway in the West, comparative literature began to gain ground in the rest of the world. New programmes in comparative literature began to emerge in China, in Taiwan, in Japan and other Asian countries, based, however, not on any ideal of universalism but on the very aspect of literary study that many western comparatists had sought to deny: the specificity of national literatures. (Basnnett, P05)

• Ganesh Devy goes further, and suggests that comparative literature in India is directly linked to the rise of modern Indian nationalism, nothing that comparative literature has been 'used to to assert the national cultural identity'. There is no sense here of national literature and comparative literature being incompatible. (Basnnett, P05)

• The work of Indian Comparatists is characterized by a shift of perspective. For decades, comparative literature started with western literature and looked outwards; now what is happening is that the West is being scrutinized from without. (Basnnett, P06)

• The growth of national consciousness and awareness of the need to move beyond the colonial legacy has led significantly to the development of comparative literature in many parts of the world, even as the subject enters a period of crisis and decay in the West. The way in which comparative literature is used, in places such as China, Brazil, India or many African nations, is constructive in that it is employed to explore both indigenous traditions and imported (or imposed) traditions, throwing open the whole vexed problem of the canon. There is no sense of crisis in this form of comparative literature, no quibbling about the terms from which to start comparing, because those terms are already laid down. What is being studied is the way in which national culture has been affected by importation, and the focus is that national culture. Ganesh Devy's argument that comparative literature in India coincides with the rise of modern Indian nationalism is important, because it serves to remind us of the origins of the term 'Comparative Literature' in Europe, a term that first appeared in an age of national struggles, when new boundaries were being erected and the whole question of national culture and national identity was under discussion throughout Europe and the expanding United States of America. (Basnnett, P08-09)

• The new comparative literature is calling into question the canon of great European masters. (Basnnett, P09)

• The opening statements of The Empire Writes Back (Subtitled: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures) include the following phrases: "the term 'post-colonial' … is most appropriate as the term for the new cross-cultural criticism which merged in recent years and for the discourse which this is constituted." What is this but comparative literature under another name?  (Basnnett, P10)