The cross cultural approach is fashionable. See Gayatri Spivak Death of a Discipline.

The American And The French Madness

Abdul Sattar Jabur Adday

The French school explores various areas such as

- Literary Schools and Genres

- Ideological Echoes

- Image Echoes

- Verbal Echoes

- Human Models and Heroes   

The American school came as a reaction against the French school. It’s advocates tended to depoliticize comparative literature and promote universalism and interdisciplinarity. It explores two main areas parallelism and intertextuality.

The cross cultural approach is fashionable. See Gayatri Spivak Death of a Discipline.

Evolution and Schools of Comparative Literature Theories (http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/viewFile/9435/10122)

School of Comparative Literary Studies (http://www3.carleton.ca/calendars/archives/grad/9293/PDF/arts_comparative_literary.pdf)

Comparative literature based on the theory of anxiety of influence

The French school sets conditions on both the studied literary texts on the one hand as well as on the relationship of influence between them on the other hand. It is also obsessed with terminology and makes distinction between influence, reception, borrowing and imitation. Comparatists of the French School also distinguish between direct / indirect influence, literary / non-literary influence, positive / negative influence.

Comparative Literature though stands alone in the genre of kinds of literature, yet has to be more matured and widely understood. The definition of Comparative Literature is confined in its own gamut, and yet to come and mix with the mainstream literature worldwide. Not every university teaches Comparative Literature, which proves that Comparative Literature requires more attention in order to discover much more understanding of the world literature and discover the cross-cultural relation what Gothe and Kalidasa or Homer or Valmiki or Bakimchandra Chatterjee or Francis Bacon. Comparative Literature as a discipline is concerned with mapping the varieties of the "literary phenomenon", the process by which it forms, crystallizes, and moves between and across the literary systems and languages. The study of Comparative Literature, therefore, is a dynamic, context-related exercise. Major texts from all over the world, whether orally transmitted, performed or written come within the purview of our syllabus, and our primary consideration is their relation with the context in which they are written, their reception in the contexts in which they are read, their relevance to the thematological or geological process of literature that cuts across single literary systems in specific languages. The syllabi are not designed to provide cursory acquaintance with "great texts" of world literature – rather, they aim to equip the student with methodologies of reading and train her in the application of these methodologies to cultural texts. From this, it will be clear that the nature of our discipline demands a degree of flexibility, which the syllabi here appended have attempted to accommodate. Since our focus is on the development and application of methodologies with reference to specifically located texts, the choice, and enumeration of primary material cannot always remain fixed and final. Hence the syllabi have been drawn up to accommodate the widening horizons of our discipline, which is seen to be on the cutting edge of interdisciplinary scholarship. Keeping this in mind, the BA syllabus is organized chronologically, tracing the broad movements of systems within Western and Indian literature, studied with respect to texts. Then, these tools are applied to specific cases of literary transmission within various frameworks, whether they are in-depth studies of influence and response or explorations of literary migrations, re-writings, or revisions. the relations between the different language –literature within a specified period (i.e., within a synchronic frame) and movements of literary systems from one period to another (within a diachronic frame). Having given the student a preliminary idea of the varieties in which the literary process may work in different cultural contexts, the MA syllabus focuses on Thematology and Geneology, key methodological tools that Comparative Literature develops in order to study

No theory is sacrosanct, no theory is complete, and each and every theory is interrelated. It is the specialty of Literature that goes like a river. To reply to the above question I need rather explain that in order to understand and explore Comparative Literature, let me share my philosophy of study of Comparative Literature. I prefer the theory that provides me academic value more and aesthetic value less. Therefore study literature simultaneous with the history of the concerned country or time is a must. Another theory I prefer to follow where far-fetched similarities are expounded. This gives room to understand a particular genre of literature of the past. The translation is one of the best reaches to literature beyond the boundary. Johann Valentin Dreae's Christianopolis handed to me as translation, but I liked the way he wrote and realize the time of Europe in the 17the century. Poetics is one such book, hardly read originally, but it postulates the standard theory of literature.

Comparative Literature, as an independent academic discipline of literary scholarship, has undergone three major stages of development so far1: The first is the French school with its insistence on influence studies; the second is the American school with its emphasis on studies of analogy (parallel studies) and interdisciplinary research, and the third is the practice of Chinese scholars who put forward cross- civilization studies and the Variation Theory. The introduction mainly discusses the major theoretical significance and academic value of Variation Theory in the course of the development of Comparative Literature in the world. Every theory has its own folly, therefore, the best thing is to develop your own idea and build your own structure. Variation Theory has its own limitations, I would suggest to embrace electronic age and translation theory, Culture, and Peripheralities, Inter-disciplinarity.