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 literature that was excluded from, yet conscious of, the canon (and
thus in its way equally constitutive of the canon). 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 aspect 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,
educational, and communicational):
- The classics problem
- The national literacy problem
- The genre problem
- The generation/period problem
- The schooling problem
- The minority/marginal cultures problem
- The information age problem
The question addressed by this aspect 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,
knowledge
worker, continuous quality improvement, and just-in-time society of
'postindustrialism' need revisionary canons?" |
The course concludes with a practicum in canon revision whose method of
production and information medium enact the urgency of 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 a World Wide Web project that studies, reflects on, and/or innovates
upon the idea of a literary canon. |
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