I wasn't sure whether to ask in this thread or the Orientation one - but
@Extollager - who decides if a work is canonical and by what criteria? Is it all about the use of language, or the human experience it describes? Do you think there are works - perhaps by lower class writers - that are rarely included but perhaps should be considered?
When you talk about canon, are you talking about classics? How does modern fiction fit into all this? Am simply asking, because although I devoured many classics during my teens, I'm unsure how they are treated academically for study. I suspect there may be similar confusion as when trying to define what constitutes "literary fiction" in modern publishing.
I have two lists of canonical British and American literary works that I share with students. The first is from the 1960s and came from Rutgers, I believe (or else Cornell). It was a list of works upon which students should be prepared to be examined at the end of their baccalaureate careers. The second is from the 1980s and comes from the University of Illinois-Urbana. It is a list of works upon which students should be prepared to be examined before they start the Ph.D. It's interesting to note how much overlap there is. This may then be extended by looking at earlier indications of what were considered to be the British and American works with which undergraduate English studies were concerned. My sense is that there would be agreement there, too: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen...; Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Dickinson, etc.
So "the canon" seems to refer to works that, over multiple generations, were understood to be worthy of study (
without the implication that nothing outside such lists was worthy). Why were they worthy of study? Because, especially when taken together, they superlatively demonstrate the development of English and the capacity of the English language to nurture the imagination, move the heart, and impart knowledge and even wisdom. Conversely, some other works did not stand the tests of the canon. We generally do not study Bulwer Lytton, Charles Reade, and a host of others unless we are specialists in the Victorian novel, for example. These were works studied in universities, reprinted as classic by publishers, mentioned in popular journalism because everyone had at least heard of them, etc. These are also--and this needs attention--the works that later writers have often been responding to, in various ways. If you don't know them, you either misunderstand someone's later work or you are dependent on second-hand explanations. For example, Wikipedia says this of Jean Rhys's
Wide Sargasso Sea: "As with many postcolonial works, the novel deals with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation. It is also concerned with power relations between men and women." Sounds like something that would appeal to the social justice warriors. But it is a response to a canonical work,
Jane Eyre. You would be quite mistaken if you assumed that everyone who goes to college has already read the latter in high school.
It was this canon that, once upon a time, women and members of minority groups aspired to be able to study, be it noted--and that many women and members of minority groups still find to be worthy of study. Often it is reading such works that inflames in them as in white males the desire to become an English major.
There is no one definitive list of the canon, but I'd like to emphasize the great degree to which there has been agreement between the generations, that Chaucer and Hawthorne and all deserve study.
The canon has always included women writers. Because there is no final and definitive list, it is possible for an author eventually to drop out of the canon. I wonder if Sir Walter Scott and W. M. Thackeray are in this position. I can't speak for the latter, but would regret the loss of the former, in part because of his enormous importance for other authors, such as Tolstoy. It is also possible for an author to become
recognized as canonical. I'd give Elizabeth Gaskell as an example. She is not on the Rutgers or UI list. But my sense is that she is or is becoming recognized as an author deserving study like authors widely accepted as canonical. (The book I teach is
Wives and Daughters.) As for writers of non-northern European ethnicity, I'd say that V. S. Naipaul is becoming recognized as a canonical author. The book of his that I usually teach is
A House for Mr. Biswas. It needs no special pleading as a work of "postcolonial" literature; it's that, but it's an outstanding novel that should stand the test of time.
Yes, the canon is classic works. We had quite a discussion of "classic" here at Chrons some time ago. My rule of thumb is that the amount of time it takes a work to be appropriately accepted as "classic" is proportional to the time that the genre has existed.* Thus a classic play should be something that has stood the test of time for rather a long time. It is too soon to say a play is a "classic" when it is only a couple of decades old. For something to be a classic play I would say it should have been around at least, oh, a century or so. (If someone wants to have a category "classic of the modern theater" that might be fine. In that case a play even by a living playwright might be a classic -- but of the modern theater, not simply a classic play.) The novel has been around for several centuries. I myself would not object if, in the context of the present discussion about British and American literature, we began, for the novel, no farther back than Defoe, so just 300 years ago. But then if we start with Defoe, surely it is too soon to call a novel a "classic" if it's not at least fifty years old! I would prefer to push it back farther -- but to keep on including
A House for Mr. Biswas as the last book in a course on the British novel, perhaps.
The notion of classic and canon can be of enormous helpfulness in pushing back against the tendency most people have to overestimate their contemporaries and to underestimate things from earlier generations. It's the closest telephone pole that looks tallest. Universities used to know this. Now they increasingly pander to ignorant clamorers --some of whom are faculty-- who do not have the historical perspective or the rich background of reading that they need to acquire in college.
By the way, I let pass remarks earlier on this thread to the effect that the canonical works were written by rich white men. I was really surprised to see that "rich." Where on earth did
that come from?? It used to be a cliche--the poet who died impoverished in the garret. I guess that cliche served the sentiments of its day and now, for political reasons, we are to have a new cliche, about rich white men in control of writing.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/019875924X/?tag=id2100-20
*Thus I'd say that the science fiction genre and the modern fantasy genre are each about 150 years old. It's thus a bit too soon to say that, say, Mary Doria Russell's
The Sparrow is a science fiction classic, but it's not too soon to say that
The Man in the High Castle is. Now I haven't defined precisely how many years have to elapse before we can consider a work as a classic. I'm, rather, appealing to the sf reading community as a whole: I'm making a bet that most sf readers would, in fact, agree with me, even if they, like me, wouldn't articulate precisely what dates are involved, etc. Again, no question,
The Lord of the Rings is a classic of modern fantasy. Now, is
A Wizard of Earthsea or
The Last Unicorn modern fantasy classic? Here, I'd say there might be room for debate. I'd probably allow each is, but I wouldn't object to someone hesitating: Maybe it would be appropriate to hold off just a bit on declaring them such? But we'll need to wait a good 30 years or so before it becomes appropriate to say whether Eugene Vodolzakin's
Laurus is a modern fantasy classic -- though I think it may be.
