Final Reflection

     Brevity was the aim for my final draft. Brevity, as well as the attempt to spin the subject matter into a new direction. I've noticed that most scholarly articles consist of an introduction, a review of the existing discourse, and conclude with a pithy suggestion for future inquiry. The following final draft is my pithy suggestion for future inquiry, of which I am certain to take part. Lessons learned? Sure, I think so. When I look over my aims, I think I gained ground on at least 3 of them, to some extent:

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.

Final Draft

A Look Back to Look Ahead

     Twenty years ago, scholar John Guillory injected a much needed dose of lucidity in the literary canon debate when he wrote, “The canon achieves its imaginary totality...not by embodying itself in a really existing list but by retroactively constructing its individual texts as a tradition, to which works may be added or subtracted without altering the impression of totality or cultural homogeneity...the larger and more disparate the body of works to be retroactively unified, the more urgent and totalizing the concept of tradition will be” (48-49). His 1991 article questions the fervor with which literary scholars use the language of canonicity to organize and legitimate this imaginary compilation of texts to create a so-called American literature tradition. 

     Ten years later, scholar Paul Jay extends Guillory’s attack to those cultural traditions supported by the concept of canonicity in his call for a new paradigm for literary studies. He writes, “We ought to focus less on identifying what seems inherently English or American in the literatures we teach and write about, and more on understanding the functional relation between literature and the nation-state, how literary writing has been theorized and politicized in efforts to define and empower nation-states, especially from the Enlightenment onward. This kind of approach must give primary attention to the historical role literature has had in global systems of cultural exchange and recognize that this exchange has always been multidirectional” (42). In the ten years since Jay’s exploration of the relationship between globalization and the 21st century literature classroom, not much has changed. Indeed, the college literature classroom remains consistent with Guillory’s view of literature as a force for the transmission of national traditions. 

     Jay’s 2001 analysis of the future of literary studies provides a new direction in which scholars could explore the function of a literary canon: its practical implications in the classroom. For years, the canon debate focused on specific content, advocating for or against the ‘inclusion’ of particular texts and writers in the canon (see Annotated Bibliography for examples). This discourse tactic flourished until writers like Guillory pointed out the illusory nature (perhaps structure is a better word) of the literary canon concept. What remains relatively unexplored is the influence of the canon concept on typical college English students. As Jay suggests, current literary study “empowers nation-states” by building boundaries between bodies of works, distinguishing between American, Native American, English and World literatures. These boundaries, replicated in course sections, reinforce a divisive view of not only literature, but culture as well. While canonicity acts as the imaginary organizing principle of how literature scholars and teachers create reading lists, the consequences play out in the reality of the classroom. 

     To better understand the influence of the literary canon idea on student perceptions of literature and by extension, culture, requires further study. It is also necessary to reconfigure the language of the debate in terms of what Jay calls the cultural “exchange” of the English classroom. In other words, rediscovering marginalized writers not only provides literary discourse with new material (a common rhetorical strategy of literary scholars in the 1980s and 1990s), it also indicates that the original source of the marginalization resides in the discipline’s curricular actions. Jay asks that these actions or practices be made explicit by investigating the institutional framework of literary study through the paradigm of a multidirectional exchange of cultural commodities in the classroom, not just in advanced scholarly inquiry. Simply put, literature students should not only be the recipients of literary knowledge, but active participants/investigators of the construction of literary knowledge (and its resulting cultural implications) as well. 

     In the 20 years since Guillory chastised his fellow scholars for expecting canonicity to account for/maintain/question the surrounding culture from which the concept initially sprang, the discipline’s institutional foundation in colleges and universities has encouraged the status quo, rather than the innovation suggested by scholars like Jay. Should literary studies remain firmly within this institutional, State-favored framework? Is it even possible for the discipline to exist in a multidirectional, cultural exchange in a typical English classroom? These questions (and many more) will  hopefully be addressed in the next cycle of literary canon debate. 

Works Cited

Guillory, John. "Canon, Syllabus, List: A Note on the Pedagogic Imaginary." Transition Vol. 52, 1991: 36-54. JSTOR. USF Library, Tampa, FL. 18 Oct. 2010

Jay, Paul. "Beyond Discipline? Globalization and the Future of English." PMLA Vol. 116, No. 1, Jan. 2001: 32-47. JSTOR. USF Library, Tampa, FL. 18 Oct. 2010

Project Links

Initial Draft/Page

Final Rough Draft

Annotated Bibliography

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