Why is literary canon important

Of all the books in the literary canon, about Almost every school uses books that are apart of the literary canon. Some people believe that the literary canon should change due to the lack of diversity in the authors. Expanding the Literary Canon While this essay can in no way claim to contain a fully representative sampling of what various scholars have contributed relative to the ongoing debate over the literary canon, I will attempt to highlight three distinct positions which are all informed by John Guillory's critical contributions to the canonical debate.

First, I will discuss the concept of ideology and canon formation as Guillory first articulated it in his essay, "The Ideology of Canon Formation:. The literary canon is a controversial topic between english scholars and it has been debated as to whether or not it is important to continue teaching the canon to students.

The canon is quintessential to the school program and will forever be the what makes Literature special. The canon is the be all end all of english texts, in its most simple form the canon is a list of texts which is considered. According to Carson-Newman College, a literary canon is a body of literature traditionally thought to be suitable for study. Based on this broad definition of the term literary canon, the reader is left wondering whether or not Huckleberry Finn deserves its place in our literary canon?

Many people like Jane Smiley, are against it being part of our literary canon for multiple reasons. For example, she is against it because of the appearance of racism and the events throughout the book. However, despite. The list contained the names of well known and relatively obscure women writers, poets, novelists, essayists and dramatists, including the likes of well-known Mary. This exploration provides much food-for-thought for the postcolonial critic, including issues such as cultural hegemony, the struggle for identity when confronted with hybridity, and the role of the literary canon in European colonisation.

Post-colonial theory. The literary Canon has been a topic debated for many years. And making that distinction inevitably means we are creating a canon—elevating certain books above others for their literary merit, however we define that.

More broadly, I think tradition is necessary even for the most experimental and avant-garde. Subscribe Search. Support the Kenyon Review. Donate Sign up for Our Email Newsletter. To appear in the Norton or Oxford anthology is to have achieved, not exactly greatness but what is more important, certainly -- status and accessibility to a reading public.

And that is why, of course, it matters that so few women writers have managed to gain entrance to such anthologies. Belonging to the canon confers status, social, political, economic, aesthetic, none of which can easily be extricated from the others.

Belonging to the canon is a guarantee of quality, and that guarantee of high aesthetic quality serves as a promise, a contract, that announces to the viewer, "Here is something to be enjoyed as an aesthetic object. Complex, difficult, privileged, the object before you has been winnowed by the sensitive few and the not-so-sensitive many, and it will repay your attention. You will receive pleasure; at least you're supposed to, and if you don't, well, perhaps there's something off with your apparatus.

It is the wheat winnowed from the chaff, the rare survivor, and it has all the privileges of such survival. Anyone who has studied literature in a secondary school or university in the western world knows what that means. It means that the works in the canon get read, read by neophyte students and supposedly expert teachers. It also means that to read these privileged works is a privilege and a sign of privilege. It is also a sign that one has been canonized oneself -- beatified by the experience of being introduced to beauty, admitted to the ranks of those of the inner circle who are acquainted with the canon and can judge what belongs and does not.

This canon limits the neophyte reader far more than the instructor, for few students have time to read beyond the reading list. Indeed, few know that one can read beyond it since what lies beyond is by definition dull, darkened, dreary.

One must not overemphasize the rigidity of the canon, since the works that are included constantly change. Within the past few decades, for instance, the reputation of Matthew Arnold as a poet has plunged drastically while those of A. Swinburne and Elizabeth Barrett Browning have risen, each as a result of -isms: Pre-Raphaelitism in the case of Swinburne and feminism in the case of Browning and, one may add, also in the cases of Mary Wollstonecraft, Christina Rossetti , and Elizabeth Gaskell.

Can you find an essential difference between these two kinds of movements, feminist and Pre-Raphaelite?