Anyone who has taken a literature course understands the total puzzlement of class book lists. Rows of titles represent definitive examples of "The Nineteenth Century English Novel" or "American Prose," but where these masterpieces come from and what makes them worth studying remains a mystery.
Most of these books are members of the "literary canon." The mother of all book lists, the canon is comprised of the books that scholars by and large regard as "great." Often referred to but seldom defined, the literary canon and what it includes has always inspired controversy.
"One pictures a marble hallway lined with busts of literary figures," said Meredith Esser '03, giving a visual description of the canon at an English Department discussion in Sanborn Library on Monday. The discussion, attended by professors and students, was a forum for perceptions of the literary canon.
"Canons are the product of institutions," English professor Jonathon Crewe said. "They don't form of their own accord, and a little bit of the sacred clings to them."
This sacredness has worn thin in recent history, as many have criticized the canon as a cult of dead white male writers, exclusive of literature from non-Western cultures and ethnic groups. Radical changes have been advocated to the canon to include more diverse perspectives.
"The canon should be expanded so that it is more representative," Esser said.
Crewe, however, said that fierce debate over what the canon includes has died down lately. "Unqualified attacks on the canon were a feature of the cultural wars of the 1980s, and that time has passed," he said.
The result of such debates, though, was a reformation. The attacks produced the positive effect of shifting values and making it open to more new works, English professor Donald Sheehan said.
Authors like African-American Toni Morrison are now considered canonical, proof of the institution's changing nature."There has never been a stable canon," Crewe said. "There has been much debate about the canon as a cult of dead white men, but this denies the enormous cultural history behind it."
Many believe that the canon is a crucial expression of cultural achievement and regard it as a powerful aid in the study of literature.
"As human beings, it is our cultural heritage," Chien Wen Kung '04 said. "The canon should be open to expansion, but there is a core that we ought to value."
In his first-year classes, Sheehan includes authors typically thought of in conjunction with the literary canon, such as Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, he said. "They are essential texts, and certainly they are canonic because they understand us better than we understand ourselves."
It is sometimes difficult to define, though, which texts are canonical. Paloma Wu '03 said that it is hard to judge whether a work should be part of the canon because "including one text excludes another."
"We can all agree that we like each other's literature, but what do we read?" English professor Monika Otter said.
Perhaps the canon is so difficult to define because it doesn't really exist. "It is in some ways a fiction," English Professor Kate Thomas said, adding that the canon is always changing and has no real set body of works. Thomas noted that Shakespeare, who many people consider a cornerstone of the canon, was not studied as he is now until the 19th century.
"It makes no sense to talk about 'the canon,'" English professor Brenda Silver said. Silver added that the term "canon" is really one used mainly outside of the academic world, by "conservatives during the 1980s who wanted to say that there is a list of prescribed books under attack."
Thomas said, however, that it is valuable to be familiar with literature over a breadth of time, and that it is the responsibility of professors and educational institutions to encourage students to branch out and learn about literature from other eras.
No one at the discussion seemed to fear that literary classics would be pushed out of the way as new writing emerges. Sheehan, who is working on a translation of the Book of Psalms from Greek to English, said his contact with this obviously canonical text made him realize that "there is nothing dead about canonicity."
"Working with it, you make living decisions and it comes alive in your hands," Sheehan said.
