literary canons

What is a literary canon?

A general rule or fundamental principle

Where does the term literary canon originate from + give an example of a canon

The church

Rule of law

What did church members do with the texts they thought were of ‘divine revelation’ and what were they deemed

They decided which texts were of divine revelation

Canonical

Name 3 texts that are based around canonicity and literary tradition (give the year and author)

Great tradition - 1948 - F.R Leavis

Tradition and the Individual Talent - 1919 - T.S Eliot

The Western Canon - 1994 - Harold Bloom

What ways of reading made up the ‘school of resentment’

Marxist

Feminist

Postcolonial

New historicist

Post-structuralist

What did Marxists want?

Literature to be read in relation to material conditions, class struggle and ideology

What did the feminists want

They wanted people to look at more women writers

What did the post-colonialists want?

People to look at literature from colonised countries

What did new historicists want?

Wanted to read texts as cultural artefacts embedded in networks of power and history

What did post-structuralists want

Read literature in a way that exposes instability, contradictions and multiple interpretations

What does Harold Bloom argue in extract 1 from The Western Canon (p.19)

Literature should be aesthetically good

Canons exist to impose limits that are not political/moral

What did Charles Altieri argue in extract 2 from an idea and ideal of a literary canon, critical inquiry 10.1 (pg 37-60)

You can make your own canons based on what your political goal is

What did Ankhi Mukherjee argue in extract 3 from what is a classic?: post colonial rewriting and invention of the canon (p44-13)

It reflects imperial hierarchies and is exclusionary, but it also lets English and Anglophone literature/criticism rethink cultural identity and politics

What does William Wordsworth say about his poetry in advertisement to lyrical ballads 1798

His poetry uses ordinary language and everyday subjects to reveal deep universal emotions

What does Frank O’Hara say about his poetry in personism: a manifesto (1959)

He rejects abstraction and impersonal poetry, treating poems as direct, intimate communication