imagology

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". 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. It never gained much of a foothold in anglophone academia. This may be attributed to imagology's skewed relationship to Edward Said's influential Orientalism, which is much better known in this context.

== History == National stereotypes were long seen as intrinsic properties of ethnic groups. Hippolyte Taine is a major representative of this positivist view. In his Histoire de la littérature anglaise (1863) he held that cultural artefacts are determined by three factors: "moment", "milieu" and "race". 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. 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.