Imagology

{{Short description|Branch of comparative literature}} {{use dmy dates|date=February 2024}} thumb|409x409px '''Imagology''' is a branch of comparative literature. More specifically, it is concerned with "the study of cross-national perceptions and images as expressed in literary discourse".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://brill.com/view/serial/IMAG |title=Studia Imagologica |last=Horn |first=Masja |date=1992-01-01 |publisher=Brill |access-date=24 February 2024}}</ref> While it adopts a constructivist perspective on national stereotypes and national character, it does emphasize that these stereotypes may have real social effects. It was developed in the 1950s with practitioners in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://imagologica.eu/aboutimagology |title=On Imagology |website=Imagologica |access-date=2019-05-07}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |chapter=Imagology and Children's Literature: Beyond Intellectual Parochialism |title=Jahrbuch of the Geselschaft für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur |last=Wesseling |first=Elisabeth |series=Studien zu Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und -medien |editor1=Dettmar, U. |editor2=Roeder, C. |editor3=Tomkowiak, I.|year=2019 |volume=1 |pages=171–179 |publisher=J.B. Metzler |location=Stuttgart |doi=10.1007/978-3-476-04850-9_11|isbn=978-3-476-04849-3 }}</ref> It never gained much of a foothold in anglophone academia. This may be attributed to imagology's skewed relationship{{What|date=March 2024}} to Edward Said's influential ''Orientalism'', which is much better known in this context.<ref name=":0" />

== History == National stereotypes were long seen as intrinsic properties of ethnic groups. Hippolyte Taine is a major representative of this positivist view.<ref name=":3">Beller, Manfred, and Joep Leerssen. 2007. [https://books.google.com/books?id=qrRj1dPvvfAC ''Imagology : The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters : A Critical Survey'']. Studia Imagologica, 13. Amsterdam: Rodopi.</ref> In his ''Histoire de la littérature anglaise'' (1863) he held that cultural artefacts are determined by three factors: "moment", "milieu" and "race".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Histoire de la littérature anglaise |last=Taine |first=Hippolyte |year=1863}}</ref> The voluntarist view of what it means to belong to a nation was expressed by Ernest Renan in his lecture "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?" (''What is a nation?'') in 1882.<ref>Ernest Renan, [https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Qu’est-ce_qu’une_nation_%3F "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?]", lecture held in Sorbonne, 11 March 1882. Retrieved 5 June 2019.</ref> Renan argues that citizens may choose to affiliate themselves to a particular nation. Joep Leerssen terms this view proto-imagological, because national identity was still held to be an independently existing entity.<ref name=":3" />

Imagology as the study of literary representations of national or characteristic stereotypes<ref> {{cite book |last1 = Beller |first1 = Manfred |editor-last1 = Beller |editor-first1 = Manfred |editor-last2 = Leerssen |editor-first2 = Joseph Theodoor |editor-link2 = Joep Leerssen |year = 2007 |chapter = Perception, image, imagology |title = Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters : a Critical Survey |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=qrRj1dPvvfAC |series = Studia Imagologica : Amsterdam Studies on Cultural Identity, ISSN 0927-4065, volume 13 |publication-place = Amsterdam |publisher = Rodopi |page = 13 |isbn = 9789042023185 |access-date = 17 January 2025 |quote = The smallest imagological unit of analysis, in Rühling's approach, is the stereotype - not only concerning people (the exclusive focus of traditional imagology ) , but also concerning places, landscapes etcetera – which is to be scrutinized as to its investment with purportedly 'characteristic' qualities. }} </ref> emerged from the French school of comparative literature.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |chapter=Echoes and Images: Reflections upon Foreign Space |title=Alterity, identity, image : Selves and others in society and scholarship |last=Leerssen |first=Joep |location=Amsterdam |publisher= Rodopi |year= 1991 |page= 128}}</ref> The scholars who founded the ''Revue de la littérature comparée'' in 1921 (Paul van Tieghem, Fernand Baldensperger, Paul Hazard) had an historical interest in literature and wanted to go beyond the study of national images as if they were historical facts.<ref name=":1" /> Marius-François Guyard dedicated a whole chapter to the subject: "L'étranger tel qu'on le voit" ("The outsider as he is viewed"), in his book ''La Litterature comparée'' (1951),<ref>{{Cite book |title =La Littérature Comparée |last =Guyard |first =Marius Francois |publisher =Presses universitaires de France |year=1951}}</ref> which analyses novels that represent nations other than the authors' own. As the title already suggests, Guyard did not assume that these images reflected national essences, but rather treated them as representations. This shift from essences to representations makes Guyard a founding father of imagology, which is premised on the assumption that "the images which one studies are seen as properties of texts, as the intellectual produce of a discourse".<ref name=":1" /> René Wellek, a leading figure in US comparative literature, contested Guyard's inclusion of imagology in the study of comparative literature, arguing that the study of cross-national images should not become part of comparative literature, for this would turn it into an auxiliary discipline to International relations. A rift between the American and French schools of comparative literature ensued, which limited the international action-radius of imagology.<ref>{{Cite journal |last =Dyserinck |first =Hugo |date =1966 |title =Zum Problem der "images" und "mirages" und ihrer Untersuchung im Rahmen der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft |journal =Arcadia |volume =1 |pages =107–120 |language=de}}</ref>

== Theoretical assumptions == Imagologists call the representation of national stereotypes "ethnotypes". Those ethnotypes are regarded as discursive objects rather than objectively existing phenomena. They are always defined against an "other", generating an opposition between auto-images and hetero-images.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Leerssen |first=Joep |date=Summer 2000 |title=The Rhetoric of National Character: A Programmatic Survey |journal=Poetics Today |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=267–292 |doi=10.1215/03335372-21-2-267}}</ref> An auto-image is the representation of the self, while a hetero-image is the representation of the other. These representations stress difference, in keeping with the assumption that "a nation is most characteristically itself in precisely those aspects in which it is most different from others".<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |url=https://imagologica.eu/CMS/UPLOAD/Imagology2016.pdf |title=Imagology: On Using Ethnicity to make Sense of the World |last=Leerssen |first=Joep |date=2016}}</ref> In ethnotyping, national character serves as an explanatory factor for the behaviour of the actors in literary representations.<ref name=":5" /> Oppositional patterns such as North-South, East-West or Centre-Periphery with their concomitant stereotypes serve to contrast nations, regions or continents to each other. In this multi-scalar logic, the same location can be the Centre to one Other and the Periphery to another Other.<ref name=":5" /> These representations are changing over time, depending on multiple factors, such as the political and social climate and literary trends.<ref name=":5" />

== Method == Since imagology studies literary representations and not societies as such, it is a methodology for the humanities, not for social sciences. Following the theoretical assumption that ethnotypes are not measurable against an objective reality, the research focus is not on the truth-value of a representation but rather on its representation-value.<ref name=":3" /> Concretely, this means that imagological research can never raise the question of whether author A has correctly represented nation B, because national character for imagologists is non-existent outside of the literary construction. Rather, imagological research inquires into the development, construction or effects of auto-images, hetero-images or meta-images an author creates in his work. A meta-image is the image an author writing from nation A about nation B attributes to the view of nation B on nation A.<ref name=":2" /> Furthermore, it is of interest to see how ethnotypes influenced each other in comparing nationalities, time periods or genres.<ref name=":2" />

Imagological analysis inquires the intertextual, contextual and textual aspects of ethnotypes.

The intertext of an ethnoytpe is established through researching literary representations of the same nation in the same time period.<ref name=":2" /> The rationale is to investigate influences of the existing body of literary representations of a nation on the case under study. This can lead to the examination of whether a literary representation of a specific nation has changed over time. For instance, ethnotypes were traditionally often portrayed in sharply contrasting binary terms. In the late-19th century, authors increasingly used ambiguity and irony in their representations, to make them more nuanced. The contextual dimension targets the historical, social, political and economic background in which the text was written, since it is assumed that the author's immediate environment influences his/her representations.<ref name=":2" /> War between two countries, for instance, will most probably impart negative connotations to their mutual ethnotypes, while nationalism tends to reinforce the political instrumentalization of auto-images. The textual dimension of imagological analysis examines the text as such, focusing on genre conventions and rhetorical strategies.<ref name=":2" />

== Main works == Some of the key pieces to understand the methodology of imagology are compiled on the ''imagologica'' website.

* {{cite book |author=Guyard, Marius-Francois |date=1951 |title=La Littérature Comparée |publisher=Presses Universitaires de France. |language=fr}} * {{cite journal |author=Dyserinck, Hugo |date=1966 |title=Zum Problem der «images» und «mirages» und ihrer Untersuchung im Rahmen der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft |journal=Arcadia |volume=1 |pages=107–120 |language=de}} * Beller, Manfred, and Joep Leerssen (2007). ''Imagology : The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters : A Critical Survey''. Studia Imagologica, 13. Amsterdam: Rodopi. * {{cite web |author=Joep Leerssen |date=2016 |url=https://imagologica.eu/CMS/UPLOAD/Imagology2016.pdf |title=Imagology: On using ethnicity to make sense of the world |website=Imagologica}} * Katharina Edtstadler, Sandra Folie, and Gianna Zocco (2022) (eds.): [https://brill.com/display/title/58016 ''New Perspectives on Imagology'']. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

== Reference list == <references />

==External links== * [http://imagologica.eu/ ''Imagologica''] website

Category:Comparative literature