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 .
Who is part of the literary canon?
What Books Are Part of 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 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.
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 English literary canon?
The literary canon is often understood to mean the group of authors or works that a consensus of academics, historians and teachers recognise as worthy of study : these are the texts that are regularly in print, are studied for school examinations and in universities and which have ‘status’.
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 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.
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.
What books should be 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)
Is Harry Potter a work of literary merit?
Harry Potter was written for children, which means that scholars do not take it as seriously as other works. ... J.R.R. Tolkien and Dickens both wrote for children and their work have lasted and are considered to have literary merit despite their target audience.
What is the literary merit of a book?
Literary merit is the quality shared by all works of fiction that are considered to have aesthetic value . The concept of “literary merit” has been criticized as being necessarily subjective, since personal taste determines aesthetic value, and has been derided as a “relic of a scholarly elite”.
Is Harry Potter considered literature?
Harry Potter is considered a “good” literary work , and it can be assumed that it was written with good intentions.
Who started the literary canon?
“According to the scholar, Paul Lauter , who historicized the American canon, the first American literature classes started in the mid-to-late 1890s, at the same time the first American-literature textbooks started,” English professor Gregory Rutledge said.
Why is the Bible called a canon?
A biblical canon, also called canon of scripture, is a set of texts (or “books”) which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as authoritative scripture . The English word canon comes from the Greek κανών, meaning “rule” or “measuring stick”.
What is the reading canon?
The intent of a school literary canon would be that every pupil knows each of the books sufficiently well through, for example, either having read the book themselves or through having the book read to them, for example, this could be a chosen text for the teaching of reading or a book that is used for class story-time ...
