Chapter 1.7b - The ‘Parallelism’ theory

Ihab Hassan, an Egyptian born American scholar, is the founder of ‘parallelism’ theory. He opposed the ‘comparative literary’ study based on the notion of ‘influence’. He says harmony is at the root of all creation in general and in human being in particular. Undoubtedly the concept of ‘parallelism’ focuses on the semblance between the literatures of different people who have evolved in the same way. He exemplified the texts generated during the troublesome period of Feudal system. Beyond that t he critics try to distil the common features between literatures and writers with a specific, pattern. In the second phase he has shown the reaction through texts against the dominant restrictive rules of society, nature and classicism. For example he says–there would be no room for Goethe’s story Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers or Fitzgerald’s translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as examples in foreign countries if people were not prepared (mentally or culturally) for absorbing all these works’ ideas, philosophies and concepts.