Comparative literature and intertextuality: A theoretical study in modern European and American literary criticism.

摘要

In its traditionalist conception, comparative literature has aimed at comprehending the genetic and typological essence of literary phenomena (its aesthetic constituents, authors, literary schools, genres, styles, etc.). Comparative theories have approached literary texts as comprising literatures structured by the traditional controversies over the psychology of individual authors, the tracing of literary origins, and the relative value of imitation. After the appearance and development of structuralist and post-structuralist theories, this traditional emphasis began to appear incomplete and relatively narrow in aim. The result is what Rene Wellek refers to as the "crisis" of comparative literature. Where do we go from here?; Among recent efforts to redefine the traditional limitations are Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (1973). Each begins with the assumption that literature is a system of interrelated texts, but neither is ultimately able to shake off the metaphors of influence and source that the model of literary history implies. This fact throws us back into the conventional systems of 'literature' on which comparative literature has centered its activity.; Intertextuality, a post-structuralist theory, suggests ways to avoid the discipline's "crisis." Intertextuality, a text's dependence on and infiltration by prior codes, concepts, conventions, unconscious practices, and texts can effectively combat the traditionalist law of context. In essence, intertextuality subverts context.; By subordinating diachronic, biographical and psychological developments (which have occupied the traditionalist comparatists) to the synchronic structuration of the field, intertextuality activates the comparative principle and helps it out of its traditionalist limitations. Since intertextuality redefines the traditionalist limitations, the study claims "Intertextuality" to be the post-structuralist version of "Comparative Literature."; The study examines comparatists' views, such as J. M. Carre, Henry Remak, Boris Eichenbaum, Victor Shklovsky, T. S. Eliot and Rene Wellek. It also examines Roland Barthes' "La Mort de l'Auteur" (1968) and S/Z (1970), Jacques Derrida's "La Loi de Genre" (1980), M. Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination (1981) and The Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1973), Julia Kristeva's Revolution in Poetic Language (1975), Joseph Riddel's The Inverted Bell (1974) and Adena Rosmarin's The Power of Genre (1985).