What today constitutes--or ought to constitute--the Western literary canon?

What does it mean in practical terms of everyday life that there is no longer--since quite a long time--any commonly accepted literary canon in the English language?

What is a literary canon and what is it "for"? What happens when one doesn't exist?

Why might we be interested in these matters?

Should society attempt to recreate one? Do we need one?

Who can and who ought to undertake that set of tasks and how could it be done?

What ought to be in a literary canon of the English language today?

Should classic Greek and Latin works be included in their original versions--such as they exist?

Can you cite a work and its "author"* which is without question one of the works of the canon of literature?--not as this is understood in the post-Romantic sense but in the classic sense, from 5th century B.C. Athens to the late Middle Ages and early Italian renaissance.

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Recommended reading:

The Making of Literary Culture: Grammatica 350 - 1100 by Martin Irvine

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The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism
by Jill Kraye (Editor)

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Journal Western Speech Communication
Volume 40, 1976 - Issue 1 (Original Article)

When rhetoric flourished in the Carolingian empire
by Ritch K. Eich
Pages 53-62 | Published online: 06 Jun 2009

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Here, for perspective on the issue, I offer the practically solid-gold "Cultural Canon" from my own youth--these works were the reliable store of knowledge among virtually everyone I personally knew and of anyone I could reasonably imagine to be minimally adequately aware--culturally speaking. Not to have these works in one's personal repetoire was just unthinkable for me and my peers:

the complete episodes --then to date-- of the following television series:

"Leave It to Beaver"

"The Andy Griffith Show"

"Father Knows Best"

(later, one had to know all the episodes of Rod Serling's "The Twilight Zone", "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." and Bruce Geller's "Misssion: Impossible" )

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( * "Homer" accepted in this case as an "author" name. (Note: Not Homer Simpson) )

There's definitely a lot of conflicting opinions and lists out there that can't seem to agree on how best to rank the western canon (not sure I can speak to worldwide, but probably same issues). I found this experiment interesting, an applied algorithm that draws upon 114 lists from various sources using an averaging formula to produce its own ranking: http://thegreatestbooks.org/

I think interest extends only so far as one trusts the opinions of the folks who make the lists. As for whether it's a worthwhile exercise, I think it's at least always a good place to start discussion into literary qualities and what makes any book one of the 'true greats'. I take any list with a grain of salt, knowing none can be truly objective, but I'm always interested to read them: half determining how much credence to grant it based on titles familiar to me, half to see what is less familiar that might be brought to my attention.

I dread the thought of recognizing some sole authority whose word is law on THE list. Similar to language, the variations and arguing about what belongs/doesn't is what keeps literature alive. If we could lock it down to something unchangeable as if it were science, then RIP.

"I dread the thought of recognizing some sole authority whose word is law on THE list. Similar to language, the variations and arguing about what belongs/doesn't is what keeps literature alive. If we could lock it down to something unchangeable as if it were science, then RIP."

But, if the matter were music and someone--it might be almost anyone--said, "whatever the Western canon of music is, the music of J.S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is to be included in it," who'd dispute that?

Imagine someone claimed to be musically educated, "literate" musically, but didn't know of the music of all three of these composers, wasn't familiar with their work. Eye-brows would lift.

Suppose that, in graphic art, a person pretended to be educated in the graphic arts--who wouldn't find it cause for embarrassment if he was not acquainted with the work of either Leonardo (da Vinci) or Michelangelo?

Think about it: there's not a single work which, by common assent, can be practically guaranteed to be on anyone's list of literature constituting what, as an absolute minimum, a person claiming to be knowledgable in literature should have to have read--to have read closely and to know well.

Not a single work*. What does this say about our society? Our times?

( Perhaps the series, "The Simpsons" (Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie and the rest of the town's people) is the exception. The one cultural work which it is safe to assume is known to practically everyone today.)

Pairing 'claiming to be knowledgeable in literature' and 'have to have read' surely suggests Tolstoy, Dickens, Austen etc. else who will recognize your claim? Supposing you converse with anyone making a similar claim, he/she is going to dismiss you if you can't name at least those. Then will come the 'degrees of knowledgeable', but there must be some basic, starting degree constituting 'literary knowledge'?

And if one could claim not to be familiar with the Simpsons, that might be a point in one's highbrow snooty favour, to the point of faking it being desirable. How I do detest common modern culture.

"Then will come the 'degrees of knowledgeable', but there must be some basic, starting degree constituting 'literary knowledge'?"

(emphasis added)

(Why the question-mark?)

Quite--but it's a very hard argument to make that there exists today any even "blurry" "starting degree in 'literary knowledge.'" I admit that the issue is multi-faceted and that a number of things ought to be distinguished. We're concerned partly with what could be called a "common core of cultural learned-ness" and both in what that does in fact consist and, on another hand, in what it may be argued it ought to consist--if it existed at all. Also, there are things that are supposed to be not merely "nice to know" but, really, socially, politically, quite important not only to know but also important that these things be widely known, understood and appreciated. Again, it would appear that we don't have this today.

So, not merely, "What do 'we know' --and understand-- together?" but also "What ought 'we know', understand and appreciate together?"

Right now, the answer seems to be, beyond The Simpsons, 'practically nil'.

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"And if one could claim not to be familiar with the Simpsons, that might be a point in one's highbrow snooty favour, to the point of faking it being desirable. How I do detest common modern culture."

First there has to be a "high-brow" culture: If there is one, where and in what does it consist and who is defining and promulgating it--and to whom?

>2 Cecrow: "I dread the thought of recognizing some sole authority whose word is law on THE list."

But it isn't only you who won't have any truck with such a 'sole' authority-- no one is having any and that's a society in which there is apparently no voluntarily-recognized cultural authorities to speak of. We could assert some candidates but they'd be completely arbitrary and disputable. Vast numbers would fail to recognize any persons or groups we might name.

Once upon a time, there were certain social groups which, among themselves, held mutually recognized sources of knowledge--written, literary knowledge--as consituting an essential body of knowledge for any of their members to have and hold as a minimum condition of 'peer-belonging', 'membership' even if this was not always strictly formal in character. And these people recognized both their own obligations to these minimum requirements and others' possession of them when they were possessed of them.

I'll employ a question mark where I'm brainstorming rather than stating a position.

I instinctively think the answer is better than 'practically nil', but arriving at that answer doesn't offer any easy paths.

If an evolutionary chart of literature could be conjectured whereby development 'A' in literature led to 'B' led to ..., and where the further along this sequence you go, the more evolved the literary art form; I could then make the case that losing a later element of the sequence in favour of an earlier is a sacrifice, and that what we ought to retain and appreciate together are those elements that are furthest along the chain, else we are stepping back.

But then someone could easily counter with "Austen is generally regarded as higher literature, i.e. further down the conjectured chain, but then can't we say that chronologically it begat what followed in terms of influence and having set a model?" In which case last night's television is posited as furthest in the chain! So I guess there's no winning with that.

The entire field of literary critique has failed to arrive at hard and fast rules and consists of all kinds of debates over minutiae. I've read and found the book The Rhetoric of Fiction to be an excellent entry in the field, but even its author suggests there are no solid rules by which to rate one work of literature over another, only things that have "worked" within the bounds of what the work sought to convey, and that no better means of conveying can be easily imagined.

Something like War and Peace is extolled as high art because it is difficult to imagine any technique Tolstoy might have used to render it better. But then, even that's not true. Critics can cite this or that aspect and wonder whether a better effect could not have been achieved through a different approach. We cannot lock down a cannon without veering into existentialism and a case for "the best of all possible renderings (i.e. worlds)" that Voltaire so wonderfully tore apart.

A comparison of Tolstoy with Twilight being an extreme example, we're going to say Tolstoy's is the greater work. More people today wish to read the latter, and will not even open the cover of the former. Which then is 'better'? Who decides, and what does the decision mean?

I'm confessing I have no answers to your questions, but it's a fun topic.

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As things stand today, I'd see high-brow as anyone who can talk over my head about literature and judge quality based on determinants I can't even grasp. There's more than a few of those people, and most of them work in universities. If one of them said "What is this Simpsons you speak of?", that would not make me accuse them of knowing nothing about literature. I'd still feel like the dumb one.

At the other extreme, I don't want to see anarchy in literature where nothing's considered better than anything else and it's all a matter of taste, even if we have to start simply with distinguishing high from low. Tolstoy is high. Meyer is low. Seems simple enough, although trends, times and culture can reverse that. One simple measure might be 'effort and learning required'; if multiple random people living on my street made the attempt, a great many more could indistinguishably approximate Meyer's effort than Tolstoy's.

Recognition of authority is certainly key to accepting that authority's judgement and then touting it as one's own, or at least welcoming its influence.

I've come to see canon not in terms of individual works, but concepts or questions. These in turn may be exemplified by a selection from a larger number of works, the specific choices varying by personal taste, exposure, or perhaps regional resonance. It is less a finite list than the classical canon was, taking into account the hugely expanded number of works available for consideration in the 21st century, yet does not give up the ghost on the concept of a canon.

I have not attempted to draw up my personal list, or even my draft of the rubrics (concepts / questions) under which specific titles would fall. But the approach is the one which I find more persuasive than any given list, as much as I might find of note among its specific titles.

>8 elenchus:, so rather than a list, this sounds like guidelines for "select X amount from each of column A, column B, column C," etc. with all results considered equally valid? In that scenario it's the category definitions that become interesting. Can you share an example of the 'concepts or questions'?

I've not given up on lists, but I do appreciate most the titles that I see appearing over and over as comprising the closest definition of 'core' works, with some variation then following in the lower tiers. But this is from the perspective of starting with nothing, where my concept of 'core' is built by this overlap and falls victim to my happening across what sample of reputable lists. The broader the sample therefore the better, thus my most appreciation for the example I cited above in >2 Cecrow:

It is a fun topic, but there aren't going to be any simple answers...

A couple of thoughts from me:

(1) Canons and exclusive social groups: In real life, the lists of "great books" are not compiled by the upper-class men who loll in leather armchairs discussing them, but by aspirational self-helpers and schoolteachers. Anyone following the "great books" route to self-improvement would do well to remember Leonard Bast in Howard's End.

(2) Canons and authority: Literature is anarchic. Although traditions of authority exist, they are not universal, sharply defined and hierarchical, but consensual, dynamic and complicated. Literature has many different traditions, starting out from different points in history and geography, transmitted haphazardly through complex and varied processes of physical distribution, translation, republication, citation, etc. Moreover, since we stopped making reading and writing the exclusive property of a small class in society, it's been a game anyone can play, and the quantity of texts in existence is astronomically larger than the capacity of any reader to absorb them, and has been for centuries. Anyone trying to define a canon has to work from very partial and largely secondhand knowledge, and there's no way they can come to a definitive answer. Defining authorities strictly and exclusively is necessary if you are engaged in an activity that is inherently authoritarian (football, religion, law, sailing a ship, ...), but it makes only limited sense for a living, dynamic creative art.

>9 Cecrow: Can you share an example of the 'concepts or questions'?

Hey, appreciate the invitation! Your OP prompted me to consider things a little more precisely than I would have done. I'll start by saying for now I'm working it out myself, rather than having a definitive position. The first point is that I see the usefulness of canon as guiding an individual on how to live. So that question of the Good Life, and how it might be usefully understood, along with some guiding questions and references. (Naturally that's not the only possible purpose for a canon.)

The broad rubrics I'm thinking of:

Natural World
Social World
Personal World
Normative World
Aesthetic World

I see any type of literature fitting under each rubric. So: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, essays ... potentially each rubric would have instances of these, rather than creating a rubric for poetry, another for fiction, etc. Incidentally, I'd also include non-literature under each rubric, but maybe that's going too far afield for this thread. I see no reason to exclude music, dramatic performance, dance, and other modes of expression from the canon.

To flesh out a bit how that might work, here's how I'd think of the Social World:

Social World
-- Culture: Should I ever adopt practices from another tradition? How do I interact w people from different cultures?
-- SAMPLE WORK Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down

-- Community: How does community enhance an individual's life? What can I can bring to community?
-- SAMPLE WORK Paul Goodman, Communitas

-- Family: How should my relatives figure in my life differently than friends or colleagues? When is selfishness bad?
-- SAMPLE WORK Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

(These are not exhaustive subheads, just three that I'd probably include in some fashion.)

More perhaps than was necessary, but it's been fun to think about. I appreciate the opportunity.

The way I look at it, classics are worth reading for two reasons: 1) the work has influenced society or other art and literature and/or 2) the work is great writing in itself. So, for example, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' might belong in the canon, even though no critic would consider it an example of great writing, because of it's effect on U.S. history and later literature.

I have a short 'shame list': works I am ashamed I have not read yet. Or maybe it should be called the 'TBR guilt list.' Those books I'm sure would be on any canon list-- but I take comfort in knowing my shame list is shorter than most.

I agree with some of the commenters above, though: today, more people are familiar with Homer Simpson than Homer's Odyssey. A canon today would be a canon of TV shows, movies, and comic books.

>10 thorold:

"Leonard Bast in Howard's End"

There's no canon--remember? You can't assume that the reader has even heard of Leonard Bast, let alone knows the first thing about him or could take him for some object-lesson in what to avoid. You see? By the way, E.M. Forster does not make it into my canon. Now what?

..." Literature is anarchic. Although traditions of authority exist, they are not universal, sharply defined and hierarchical, but consensual, dynamic and complicated."

..."Moreover, since we stopped making reading and writing the exclusive property of a small class in society, it's been a game anyone can play, and the quantity of texts in existence is astronomically larger than the capacity of any reader to absorb them, and has been for centuries. Anyone trying to define a canon has to work from very partial and largely secondhand knowledge, and there's no way they can come to a definitive answer."

those are Romantic-Era and post-Romantic era notions--or assumptions about what is, ought to be or has to be; they certainly don't describe what was the case prior to surrendering the idea of a canon.

For a thousand years or more, every literate person throughout Europe--no matter what his local dialect-- recognized and read texts which afforded him a reliable common basis of knowledge in diverse respects--taste, ethics, history, are just a few of these. In fact, a knowledge of and mastery in the corpus of texts was the defining feature of whether one was a literate person in the first place. That does not mean that everyone thought alike or agreed on everything. It does not mean that wars were rendered obsolete. Conflicts went on. But, not only was there a common language, often there were two: Latin and Greek. And, when Latin was a living language, these litterati, "grammatici" were recognized authorities who did establish certain texts as essential in importance. We no longer have anything even remotely similar to this kind of commonly-held recognition about texts.

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"Anyone trying to define a canon has to work from very partial and largely secondhand knowledge, and there's no way they can come to a definitive answer."

And that's because not only is there no literary canon, there's no common consensus on where to go to start to think about one or how to approach the matter, in turn, because there's no canon in historical writing.

For this reason, I'd place a few texts in a preliminary canon--without which knowledge a person is simply wandering lost in the dark and doesn't even have a notion of the surrounding landscape. The Greek gods weren't dopes. They lived atop Mount Olympus for a reason: the view was incomparable from there; they could see everything around them and so, they did. They looked down on all creation.

These texts aren't the only ones where their contents are available but, one way or another, here or via other texts (and I can't propose better ones in a shorter list) one has to gain this background knowledge--that's a good phrase to describe what we lack: common background knowledge of our cultural heritage-- and there has been a very stubborn insistance on giving up on the idea that we could have a common cultural heritage or a background-knowledge that goes with it. Do without it? That's what we've been trying and failing to do now for generations. How's that working out?

A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell

In The Country of the Young , John W. Aldridge

The Making of Literary Culture: Grammatica 350-1100, Martin Irvine

The Open Society and Its Enemies (in two volumes) , Karl R. Popper

(though I haven't read it, I've been meaning to and I think it's important enough to go here: (amended) The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Clifford Geertz (to be read soon)

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman

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optional : (also haven't read this--yet) All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman

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--- all these have their flaws. The flawless book hasn't been written yet.

RE:

>7 Cecrow: "As things stand today, I'd see high-brow as anyone who can talk over my head about literature and judge quality based on determinants I can't even grasp. There's more than a few of those people, and most of them work in universities. If one of them said "What is this Simpsons you speak of?", that would not make me accuse them of knowing nothing about literature. I'd still feel like the dumb one."

That's interesting (to me). Why not name a few?--beside Wayne Booth.

ETA: I had to return to this because, taken seriously, your words here are problematic:

Your position here says that you view the literary high-brow as the person who "can talk over my head about literature and judge quality based on determinants I can't even grasp"-- thus, you make a judgment--in the supposed-highbrow's favor, to boot--about a person you admit is talking beyond your understanding, judging "quality based on determinants I can't even grasp." This seems to say, "How do I know he's highbrow? because I can't even understand him."

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"At the other extreme, I don't want to see anarchy in literature where nothing's considered better than anything else and it's all a matter of taste, even if we have to start simply with distinguishing high from low."

Agreed, of course.

Tolstoy is high. (Stephanie) Meyer is low. Seems simple enough, although trends, times and culture can reverse that. One simple measure might be 'effort and learning required'; if multiple random people living on my street made the attempt, a great many more could indistinguishably approximate Meyer's effort than Tolstoy's. (emphasis added)

...although trends, times and culture can reverse that....

Exactly. What (or who) is to prevent this from becoming true in fact? :

Tolstoy is low. (Stephanie) Meyer is high. Seems simple enough.

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At first glance this looks quite appealing as a guide:

"One simple measure might be 'effort and learning required'"

but, unfortunately it doesn't work reliably: there are numerous extraordinarily difficult texts which are simply rubbish. Their authors' failings rather than their virtues made (or make) these texts difficult.

The work of Leo Strauss or Isaiah Berlin might be an example. Complicated does not equal "deep" oe "astute"--not that you equated these.

>13 proximity1: You can't assume that the reader has even heard of Leonard Bast

Quite - that was a deliberate wind-up, of course. But it was OK for me to refer to Leonard Bast, because there is enough cultural overlap around that I can be confident that anyone taking part in a discussion of this sort, in English, on LibraryThing, even if they haven't read Howard's End - and a large proportion will have done so, or at least seen a film adaptation - will be able to place it at least approximately in the cultural landscape and - if sufficiently interested - can follow up the reference on Wikipedia with a couple of clicks.

If I were living in the Middle Ages, I would need to be sure that any reference I put into a discussion comes from a text that the reader already knows well, otherwise I would be putting him to the inconvenience of having to travel three days by mule over the mountains to the nearest monastery with a precious set of E.M. Forster manuscripts in its chained library. Bu fortunately for me, I'm not.

The Greek gods weren't dopes. They lived atop Mount Olympus for a reason

Olympian heights/ivory towers are dependent on the mortals at the bottom for their survival. Once hoi polloi(*) start to get the idea that they might as well be up there with you enjoying the odour of the sacrifices, it starts to get mighty crowded...

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(*) Notice that I didn't say "the hoi polloi" :-)

>15 thorold:

RE : "If I were living in the Middle Ages, I would need to be sure that any reference I put into a discussion comes from a text that the reader already knows well, otherwise I would be putting him to the inconvenience of having to travel three days by mule over the mountains to the nearest monastery with a precious set of E.M. Forster manuscripts in its chained library. But fortunately for me, I'm not."

But if we were living in the Middle Ages, this discussion wouldn't even be necessary--and, even if you, for example, lived in Antwerp and I lived in Avignon, we could have the discussion or a different one--and that's because we'd either both be educated in Latin (and, in the best case scenario, Greek) or we'd not be among the society who could and would discuss such things.

ETA :

But, more to the point, rather than worrying about your need to "be sure that any reference I put into a discussion comes from a text that the reader already knows well," unless your correspondent is a novice, he shall know the texts to which you refer. That's one of the key points--speakers could count on their interlocutors' having assimilated the same basic works since these constituted a canon of the texts a literate person has read.

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RE : "The Greek gods weren't dopes. They lived atop Mount Olympus for a reason

Olympian heights/ivory towers are dependent on the mortals at the bottom for their survival. Once hoi polloi(*) start to get the idea that they might as well be up there with you enjoying the odour of the sacrifices, it starts to get mighty crowded...
---
(*) Notice that I didn't say "the hoi polloi" :-) " ;^)

I like this but it misses the point. Not everyone needs to or wants to live atop Olympus today--nor is that any longer (figuratively) necessary to their having access to a very high standard of literary awareness.

>11 elenchus:, those categories surprise me, since they constitute themes or topics where I was expecting them to categorize technique. Or perhaps the classic conflict categories: man vs man, vs nature, etc. I don't see any assurance that I'll become literarily knowledgeable through reading a bit about nature, a bit about society, etc. (although that may help me become more worldly).

I was going to say it might turn out that, by other definitions of how we define the "best books", some of these categories dominate others in terms of writing quality (so far). But that's no reflection on those categories in particular, since that argument stands with any selection of categories, given any two definitions.

>12 madpoet:, what constitutes a classic does stand near the heart of judging literary quality, and may even be the same question. I appreciate the significance of books in their historical context like the Uncle Tom's Cabin example, but it becomes a side issue if the primary factor in defining canon is writing quality, which is how I tend to lean.

Taking the idea of categories and writing quality together, perhaps the categories ought to refer to technique (as we would evaluate visual art based on baroque, modern, etc. where an example from one is a terrible example of another and yet we appreciate both in context). One list I particularly like is 501 Must-Read Books, which selected a mix of audience and purpose as categories: children's literature, classics, memoir, history, modern, SFF, thrillers and travel. Another case where a strong example of one would be a miserable example of another, but all can be found worthy.

>7 Cecrow:

RE Wayne Booth, I confused him--not for the first time--with Clifford Geertz; please don't ask how or why; I have no idea myself why but, everything I wrote referring to Booth I'd intended apply to Geertz, and, in particular, The Interpretation of Cultures : Selected Essays--which I mean to read as soon as possible.

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ETA:

Sheesh. Never mind Geertz either. Though in his book he appears to concern himself with related matters--ideology, the growth of culture, ethos, world-view. etc. he does not specifically address literacy as a cultural phenomenon as far as I can tell. Nowhere in the text's index are the entries "writing," "literacy," "reading," "grammar" or "grammatica". Instead, he is interested in what I suppose are quite oral* cultures--Java and Bali, specifically--though, in chapter 7, " 'Internal Conversion' in Contemporary Bali," a section treats "The concept of Religious Rationalization"--which, if anything, is an apt description for how, in a post-classical Roman world, medieval pagans and Christians fought a battle for cultural hegemony with, in the end, the so-called "Christians' " forces (as the Church of Rome) vanquishing and supplanting the original pagans' Greek and Roman Grammatica with a methodically and ideologically-operated Christian grammatica-- indeed, though Geertz makes no explicit mention of it, the rise of medieval Christian European civilization is inconceivable outside of the historical context of this defeat of classical pagan grammatica's authority and replacement by a new Christianized form.

Having noted that "Rationalized relgions, on the other hand, are more abstract, more logically coherent, and more generally phrased," Geertz goes on:

"The so-called world religions developed, (Max) Weber argued, as responses to the appearance in an acute form of just this sort of need. Judaism, Confucianism, Philosophical Brahmanism, and, though on the surface it might not seem to be a religion at all, Greek Rationalism, each emerged out of a myriad of parochial cults, folk mythologies, and ad hoc by-beliefs whose power had begun to fail for certain crucial groups in the societies concerned. This sense, on the part, largely, of religious intellectuals, that the traditional conglomerate of rituals and beliefs was no longer adequate and the rise to consciousness of the problems of meaning in an explicit form, seems to have been part, in each case, of a much wider dislocation in the pattern of traditional life. The details of such dislocations (or of those amidst which later world religions, descended from the first four, appeared) need not detain us. What is important is that the process of religious rationalization seems everywhere to have been provoked by a thorough shaking of the foundations of social order."

(Geertz, p. 173; The Interpretation of Cultures )

Well, as it happened, within those details of wider dislocations which need not detain us, the civilized world of the time saw a centuries-old Greek and Roman literary culture, based on a firmly-established and ideological (from its very inception) conceptual order known as challengedgrammatica, challenged by and overturned by another and differently-based ideological order --similarly founded on and propagated through a continuation of a refashioned self-consconciously Christian Grammatica. One canon was, in a long battle, gradually overturned and replaced by another-- a Christian gospel one with many commentaries appended, copied and circulated.

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* Of course, before ancient Greece became a literate culture, it, too, was a strictly oral culture and some key aspects of the supplanting of the thoroughly oral character of this culture by a literacy--which makes up part of the story related by Irvine in his book -- was of course momentous, a social and intellectual upheaval over generations as is bound to happen in such a circumstance where literacy is gained or lost in a civilization.

NB: in case it isn't completely clear without expressly stating it, the views I express here in this and other posts in this thread, including summarizations of historical events, etc., are nearly completely drawn from and rely on my reading of Martin Irvine's study, The Making of Literary Culture, 1994, Cambridge University Press.

>18 proximity1:, that's too bad, I was taking credit for inspiring you after mentioning Booth's work in >7 Cecrow:. The Rhetoric of Fiction is a great work of literary criticism; I haven't read a lot in the field, but it went a long way to improving my appreciation for the classics.

>17 Cecrow: if the primary factor in defining canon is writing quality, which is how I tend to lean.

Is it? I tend to think of books as an almost magical mix of both what is said, and how it is said, with the truly amazing ones becoming something greater than the sum of the parts. It's how that happens that continues to fascinate me and drives me towards an open and flexible approach to what constitutes "canon." There is this notion that a canon is a fixed thing, frozen in time, usually with Shakespeare and Homer somewhere at the peak. But since every person brings their own unique approach to every book, the idea of a fixed canon seems like a futile endeavor, doomed to fail.

>19 Cecrow:

Well, I got the book-- and in fact I have it next to me now--and, upon looking into it, I had to recognize that this was not the book and almost certainly not the author I'd had in mind; so I set about trying to recall both and it wasn't easy because I still don't reocgnize why I confuse the two. But at last I figured it out. And, not having read Geertz either, I may find that I've very much mistaken what he's saying and doing in his work. ( ETA : Note-- Indeed!, see the revised post >18 proximity1: above. )

To repeat a point made numerous times by Irvine in his book, the Romantic and post-Romantic literary theory and concepts do not apply to classical, medieval or even renaissance literature. In Irvine's thesis, neither "authors" nor "Literature" existed as we normally think of them today and since the Romantic era of literature although, obviously, this had to have gradually changed and it did. For Irvine, readers of classical texts through the middle ages and into the renaissance did not have or keep in mind an individual personality as "author" of the text the way that is natural for us to do. In their world, the "auctore" was synonymous with "the text" itself.

Booth's views on the novel may be fascinating but the historical literary canon to which I refer here was already on life-support long before the writers with whom Booth is concerned were even born.

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“Indeed, the litteratus formed by grammatical culture was defined by the ability to read Latin—and not any kind of Latin, but the normative, written Latin of classical and Christian tradition.”

--p. 20 Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “Grammatica” and Literary Theory 350-1100, (1994, Cambridge University Press)

Referring to “the extensive body of commentary transmitted with the manuscripts of Vergil's works” to early medieval times, Irvine writes, (at page 120)

...”the (grammaticus') commentaries presuppose a semiotic model of literary meaning; that is, the focus of interpretation was the text as a system of culturally encoded signs, not the personality or subjectivity of the author or reader nor the factual history assumed to be preserved by the text. … Furthermore, the author's personal intentions are rarely invoked as an explanatory principle. The intentio poetae (“poet's purpose”) and intentio scribenis (“purpose for writing”) as explanatory topics are tied to public and literary matters like the imitation or aemulatio of a generic model and consistency to religious tradition or political ideology. The auctor does not function as an origin for the value and meaning of the text and the poet's personal voice is never recognized. The term auctor in the grammatical tradition ordinarily refers to a text, not to a person or human subject that stands behind the text as an authenticating origin.”

(emphasis added in final sentence)

>17 Cecrow: those categories surprise me, since they constitute themes or topics where I was expecting them to categorize technique. ... I don't see any assurance that I'll become literarily knowledgeable through reading a bit about nature, a bit about society, etc. (although that may help me become more worldly).

That's why the purpose of the canon must be clear. For me, a literary canon isn't to make me literarily knowledgeable, it's to guide me in life. But that's my preferred objective. For anyone looking to attain literary knowledge, the canon would be a much different thing.

>22 elenchus: "For me, a literary canon isn't to make me literarily knowledgeable, it's to guide me in life." (emphasis added)

(scatches head)

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others."

― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, (Univ. of Chicago Press.)

ETA:

I wonder about the supposed distinction implied--rather, expressed--here.

What about the basic social-value of a canon of literature the knowledge of which a very large proportion of the general population have in common reading experience?--that, of course is a very loose manner of speaking since there are potentially vast differences in the way readers are effected by reading any given text--still, with that granted.

Do you consider a work's inclusion in your personal idea of a literary canon foremost then for what you reckon it can or does (has) offer(ed) as a guide in your life? How does this work in practice? Are texts read "on spec" after having been selected according to some unstated criterion and then added or not to your canonical list according to how you regard their usefulness as a guide in life?

What about a work or a body of work which you haven't read but which you've preliminarily classified (by whatever method) as not likely to be or to offer much help as a guide in life? Would that work or those works be given a trial reading or dismissed from consideration?

Using your approach, I'd have to read at least some of a text before I had a sound idea of its potential usefulness as a guide. So that doesn't help greatly narrow down the starting list which, without some sort of preliminary winnowing process, could be huge.

How do you decide whether you'll read a work from Thomas Acquinas or from Augustine of Hippo? If you're not a Stoic, do you skip all reading of the Stoics? Epicureans? Platonists?

I've begun and become captivated by numerous books which, when I started, I never dreamed might be either particularly usefull or useless as a guide in life but which, at the end, had profoundly shaped my thinking about--the world, myself, others, or something else whether or not in the end they were books which I could take and use a guide in my own life.

For example,

Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years and Le commerce des promesses : Petit traité sur la finance moderne

Do you have a profile-idea of the sort of authors who, a priori could or could not, in your judgment, serve you well as guides in life?

>23 proximity1:
Unless I misunderstand, many of your questions focus on books which I'd not try to fit into a canon. They'd be my individual discoveries, and which may prove equally or even more important to me than canonical texts. And you would have others, idiosyncratic to your experience.

An assumption I have is that many people in recognizably Western communities will benefit from understanding what others have tried before them, in an attempt to lead a good life. I expect these ideas will have a general identity because Western civilization has a general identity. Hence the idea of a canon. I think it is only a general guideline for each individual -- there will be many other, non-canonical influences for each individual. But recurring questions are usefully addressed by a canon, providing the answers also have a broad general identity to them. I'm assuming there is such a broad identity, but it's an assumption worth questioning.

The key point for me is not to define the canon in terms of attaining mastery of literature, but more broadly in terms of attaining mastery of one's life.

>20 southernbooklady:
Does the very concept of a canon imply or explicitly require a set of necessary texts? I don't understand the concept that way, but perhaps its integral to the concept. I'd agree a fixed canon makes little sense today except perhaps in a very narrow sense, amounting to a course curriculum.

>24 elenchus: Does the very concept of a canon imply or explicitly require a set of necessary texts?

Well, that is one of the definitions of the word. :-)

Middle English, from Late Latin, from Latin, standard
a : an authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture
b : the authentic works of a writer the Chaucer canon
c : a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works the canon of great literature

"rule," "law," "standard," "authoritative," "authentic" -- these are all terms that coalesce around the concept.

It appears I may be abusing the term! In which case, I apologise for any hijacking of the thread.

>26 elenchus:

As I see it, the thread is about what people consider the term "literary canon" to mean as they understand and use it today as well as what the term has historically been understood to mean. It helps to understand what ideas people now attach to this concept and how they use it, if they use it at all.

Kristian Jensen ((1996), Head of the Bodelian Library's Incunable Project) has an interesting essay, "The Humanist reform of (Medieval) Latin and Latin teaching (in the Renaissance)" as part of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism. Certain concerns about lanuage usage and teaching in that time, about its problems and pitfalls, resemble some of our own today. Also, we have the perspective which comes from having seen which of various contending groups' fears and warnings were borne out in later developments and which were exaggerated or mistaken.

>23 proximity1: "What about the basic social-value of a canon of literature the knowledge of which a very large proportion of the general population have in common reading experience?"

I think that is part of what defines a 'canon'-- but, unfortunately, it is a small minority who have read what you or I might think of as 'great literature', so a canon based on commonly read novels would be heavy on Harry Potter and J.R.R. Tolkien, and light on James Joyce or George Eliot.

>28 madpoet:

I largely agree with that. I haven't read (much--as I define that, at any rate) of "what you or I might think of as 'great literature' " either. Though I have read some great literature--fiction and non-fiction of course; poetry and prose and drama and comedy in play format.

---> "a canon based on commonly read novels would be heavy on Harry Potter and J.R.R. Tolkien"

Correct, but don't forget Jane Austen or Stephen King, or....

http://www.wonderslist.com/10-most-successful-authors/

Haruki Murakami maybe the best of this group. I read his novel (in English translation), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He's a talented novelist (based on the translation). Whether, in Japanese, he's a literary master, I can't say.

Still, you know something? I'd almost welcome any set of canonical works on the hope that, however disappointing, their very existence should help launch a debate about which do and don't belong. After all, that is inevitable. Even in early canons, the litterati discussed and debated which texts were properly in the canon and why.

No matter how poor, we need a start.

_________________________

Note:

"Is College Worth It? Increasing Numbers Say No"
by Michael Barone

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/06/09/is_college_worth_it_increa...