The Canon Project Pages

***Final***

**Rough Draft of Canon Final**

"Whatever literature we learn early, from pre-school nursery rhymes to high-school Shakespeare and university Milton, provides us with the keys to nearly all the imaginative experience that it is possible for us to have in life...What is popular, in the sense of being permanently and genuinely well loved, is a by-product of education, and when our education improves, the quality of what we like improves too, until we reach the fully mature level at which not only Shakespeare but also C.L.R. James and other staples of culture and subculture are popular. "

- Mustapha Marrouchi* (190)

Compositional Strategy for the Canon Project:

You are viewing my rough drafting page, which has changed over the course of the semester in response to my research. I think there's a way to view old drafts of this page, if you really want to. When I say that this page is a rough drafting page, I mean that I have used this page as a means to throw compositional strategies and ideas out there for me to reflect on. I'm an old school writer, complete with sticky notes, busted notebooks and scribbles in the margins. This wiki environment allows me to digitize some components of the research/writing process, namely the exploration of what structure I should utilize in my project. I have a cork board on my wall at home; I have this wall on my wiki home.

I started out by considering how the literary canon relates to me personally, moved into the idea of giving examples of canons in more accessible contexts, branched out into the internet, looking for mainstream interpretations of the literary canon, offered some reflection of the research process, and manipulated the annotated bibliography genre to suit my reflective needs, as well as to act as a repository of my research so far. Since part of this project is to consider the literary canon in a historical context, I deliberately included articles from the past 25 years or so (basically since the field started using the term 'canon').

Project Aims:

I am exploring the discourse surrounding the canon for a variety of purposes, to wit:

1) A multifaceted understanding of the canon will assist me in making thoughtful, informed decisions in the classroom, particularly in crafting reading lists for students.

2) As an advanced lit scholar, I am expected to contribute to the ongoing discourse with fresh insight, or at least, perspective. Since the canon is the major organizational system in my field, it behooves me to engage in rigorous study of its origins, its practices, and what its future may entail.

3) Literary anthologies, which are usually the primary texts of English classes, maintain a relationship with the canon that influences what texts are readily available to people and what texts are not. I need to develop an understanding of the canon which includes its practical implications, as well as its theoretical and aesthetic implications.

4) In addition to increasing my ability to discuss and draw conclusions about the canon, my aim also involves contextualizing the canon in terms of the kind of works I consider vital to understanding the world as we now know it: resistance/protest literature of the 20^th century.  

While I hope to draw some conclusions about the canon, I see my study of it as a lifelong pursuit. I believe that discussing literature from a theoretical or critical standpoint need not be the sole domain of critics and scholars. I also question the wall between high art and pop culture and view that boundary as highly permeable. Yes, it’s an issue of aesthetics. But I also think it’s an issue of access. So, this exploration of the literary canon will pool together a variety of points-of-view from a variety of sources.

Becoming a stronger writer means becoming a stronger reader:

Annotated Bibliography of Literary Canon Articles

Mid-Semester Reflection on the Project:

It’s become self-evident that all avenues of avoidance have deteriorated into a single roundabout. So I circle the literary discipline which holds me in sway, eyeballing writers and texts, searching for a commons in which all the cacophony rises into some holistic silence. Not the silence forced upon a person or the silence of a text which never receives feedback, but the silence of being wholly present, alive, always listening. This silence is the product of community, of cacophony, of direct experience with opposing forces meeting on the common ground of human thought. There is no resolution in this silence, there is only the process of reading, writing and absorbing the conflict on its own terms. As I round this “wide angled curve”, the polarity of the canon seems muted, which could only be brought about by the interminable reading of scholarly after scholarly article, advocating and damning the canon in turn. Said, Fanon, Achebe and virtually every feminist need the canon, if for no other reason than it provides a whipping post. And the canon needs its Bloom, Arnold and company, if for no other reason than the carrying of the works of ‘great’ men into the 21^st century so that others may be awed or horrified as the circumstances warrant. But I think literary studies can transcend the whipping post and cultural grandstanding. It can become greater than the sum of its highly specialized parts in connecting multiple readings, across genre, medium and purpose. It can become relevant again by taking Achebe and Conrad, reading them side by side to fashion a new reading: a post, postcolonial reading that leaves nothing out, that straddles conflict without falling into politeness. The new century commands new literacies from us; how can we afford to ‘agree to disagree’ when that phrase has lost its meaning and vigor? Maybe the literary field never was anything other than a prefabricated henhouse, fallen in disrepair, resting on its deteriorating hinges and laurels. Ok then, what next? How far can we take this composition and more importantly, how can we become inclusive from our fraying exclusive roots?

Literary Theory Players in Conversation:

Edward Said

T.S. Eliot

Hooded Negro

Helene Cixous

A roundtable discussion about Susan Sontag

Literary canons in mainstream media: These articles demonstrate the current trend of undermining the implicit aesthetics involved in canon formation. In other words, these articles use the canon as a means to question the implied authority of interpretation. It's interesting to note that these mainstream writers use the same methods of scholarly writers, albeit in a less-disciplined fashion.

What happened to the Black Literary Canon?

A resurgence in a Soviet literary canon?

Queering the canon?

Works Cited

Marrouchi, Mustapha. "The Value of Literature as a Public Institution." College Literature Vol. 33, No. 4, Fall, 2006: 170-196. JSTOR. USF      

     Library, Tampa, FL. 28 Aug. 2010

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