What Is Literary Canon?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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The term “literary canon” refers

to a body of books, narratives and other texts considered to be the most important and influential of a particular time period or place

. Take a 19th century American literature course, for instance.

What is literary canon example?

Examples of this include the American canon, under which works such as

The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby fall

or the canon of Romantic English poetry which poets such as Blake, Wordsworth and Keats belong to. Since the 1960s though there has been a shift in opinion towards the canon.

What is the meaning of literary canon?

The term “literary canon” refers

to a body of books, narratives and other texts considered to be the most important and influential of a particular time period or place

. Take a 19th century American literature course, for instance.

Who is in the literary canon?

The literary canon includes

writers from ancient times

, all the way through the late-twentieth century. In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom published The Western Canon, in which he names 26 “immortal” authors, including Homer, William Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf.

What texts are in the literary canon?

  • To Kill a Mockingbird (Paperback) Harper Lee. …
  • The Great Gatsby (Paperback) F. …
  • Pride and Prejudice (Paperback) Jane Austen. …
  • Jane Eyre (Paperback) Charlotte Brontë …
  • Wuthering Heights (Paperback) Emily Brontë …
  • 1984 (Kindle Edition) …
  • Lord of the Flies (Paperback) …
  • Romeo and Juliet (Mass Market Paperback)

Why is the literary canon important?

The most important positive aspect is that the

canon provides students with a selected bibliography

, which gives most literature classes a sense of unity. The canon also allows a student to read a select amount of literature from each period so they may reach several literary movements in a small amount of time.

How is the literary canon formed?

In the cultural field of literature canon formation, on the one hand, means

the artistic quality of certain literary works is recognized

; on the other hand it means certain writers and genres through socialization and institutionalization, are accepted by all the society and acquire legal status and become part of the …

Does the literary canon change?

Literary canons, like the works that comprise them and the judgments of those who create them,

are constantly changing

.

Is Harry Potter in the literary canon?

In light of the ubiquitousness of the Potter books, it may be difficult to imagine a time when children’s literature was only a fledgling genre with limited distribution. …

What is the problem with the literary canon?

John Guillory, in his 1993 Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, argued that

the “canon” we pass on–the basic curriculum of the University or literary culture

–is an example of “cultural capital.” The canon does not pass on merely the literature itself, but passes on a kind of social class and idea …

Is Sylvia Plath in the literary canon?

This newsletter shares stories of women writers who’ve been left out of the literary canon for reasons unknown or unwarranted. But

Sylvia Plath is not one of those women

. … I bring her up today to try to understand why she survived the patriarchal editing out of historical authors when so many other women didn’t.

Is 1984 in the literary canon?

A literary canon refers to a body of books, narratives, and various texts that are considered within academia to be the most important or influential. If you look up which books comprise the English canon, you find titles like The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, and Frankenstein.

What is literary value?

Literary value does not include the values expressed or implied in a text but refers

specifically to how one can attribute worth to a text in terms of its value to

‘civilisation’, a culture, a society, or a particular group of people.

What is canonical text?

tion.”1 A canonical text is

one whose importance we recognize

, al. though in some radical sense we are not able to understand it. Ac. cordingly, we do not simply interpret the text, making its message. available; we also insist that its given form is the only means through.

Do we need literary canon?


The existence of a canon is essential to a culture

. It means that people share a set of references and resonances, a public vocabulary of narratives and discourse.” This shared inheritance, he argues, is now being destroyed by multiculturalism and technology, satellite television and the internet in particular.

Why is it called canon?

The term canon, from a Hebrew-Greek word meaning “cane” or “measuring rod,”

passed into Christian usage to mean “norm” or “rule of faith

.” The Church Fathers of the 4th century ce first employed it in reference to the definitive,… … In these various writings the early church…

Amira Khan
Author
Amira Khan
Amira Khan is a philosopher and scholar of religion with a Ph.D. in philosophy and theology. Amira's expertise includes the history of philosophy and religion, ethics, and the philosophy of science. She is passionate about helping readers navigate complex philosophical and religious concepts in a clear and accessible way.