 OVERVIEW
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| This graduate-level seminar examines the current canon debate in a way that
gives students a grasp of the history and theory of canon formation as well as
hands-on practice in canon revision (tailored to the particular
field-specialties of students). The course proceeds simultaneously along two
intellectual threads: |
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Canon Formation
Readings in:
- Primary literature and criticism in the self-consciously canonical lineage
that was formative of the English literary canon as we now know it (authors
include Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Gray, W. Wordsworth,
Coleridge, P. Shelley, Keats, Arnold, Hulme, Eliot)
- Primary non-canonical literature that was conscious of the canon that
excluded it and therefore equally formative of the literary canon as we now
know it (authors include Lady Mary Wroth, William Collins, Robert Burns, John
Clare, Felicia Hemans, Ann Radcliffe, Dorothy Wordsworth)
- Current academic criticism and theory of the canon as well as selections
from the journalism of the "culture wars."
The questions this part of the course addresses: "how do authors know who
are the Great Authors (as well as the "minor" and
"marginal" authors)? how do they build that knowledge into their
works?" |
Canon Institution
Readings on the following topics or "problems" designed to suggest
that the evolution of the canon cannot be understood separately from that of
the major institutions of the modern nation-state (political, economic, social,
and educational):
- "The classics problem"
- "The national literacy problem"
- "The genre problem"
- "The generation/period problem"
- "The schooling problem"
- "The minority/marginal cultures problem"
- "The anthology/publishing problem"
The question addressed by this part of the course: "why does society need
a canon?" And an updated version of this question that will become
increasingly important as the "team"-projects in the course proceed
(see below): "why does the team-based, flat, downsized,
![[Info]](filing.gif) knowledge
worker, continuous quality improvement, and just-in-time inventory society of
postindustrialism need revisionary post-canons?" |
| The course concludes with a practicum in canon revision whose
production-format and medium reflect on the last question above. Students break
into teams (e.g., a Renaissance team, an 18th-C. team, a Romantics team, an
Americanist team) and over the course of several weeks create the apparatus for
an innovative literary anthology or course in their field. The apparatus will
be put online on the World Wide Web. |
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![[Online]](redball3.gif){kind=small}
). Other WWW links are to non-required
online equivalents of print texts--which by comparison sometimes have less
consistent or up-to-date textual/editorial integrity (caveat emptor).
Links embedded in author names are to non-required
online resources related to that author.