Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

have been produced to please the majority of the populace, marketed for the masses and
hence aimed at lower levels of distribution and consumption. Concurrently, in view of
the attention devoted to texts which originated before the emergence of a full-fledged
commercial literature, ancient perspectives regarding aesthetical value were reinstated as
criteria to evaluate literary greatness. Hence, the critical emphasis on aestheticism and
historicism in the middle of the eighteenth century set the stage for canonization and
established the literary critic as a figure of authority (Krammick 104).
Amidst this multitude of paradigm shifts and ensuing tensions—modernity,
popularity, style, universality, relativity, longevity, classic vs. modern, popular vs. art,
aesthetical vs. historical, relative vs. universal—and amidst “corrections,” “remodelings,”
and expurgation by Dryden and Pope, such as the rewriting of Troilus and Cressida
mentioned above, Shakespeare was—and still is—repeatedly consecrated as “the
greatest” writer who ever lived, for he embodied all criteria, past and present, and his
writing admirably represented what Samuel Johnson determined to be the ability to speak
to many people in many locations, to speak generally and not individually and thus to last
through time as Krammick observes (198-99). In his dedicatory verses in 1623, Ben
Jonson had previously stated a similar view: "[Shakespeare] was not of an age, but for all
time." In other words, Shakespeare not only mastered style and addressed a multitude of
social, political, and historical issues, but his work also contained a universal and lasting
quality—all characteristics still used today in evaluating literature.
As the above discussion suggests, the eighteenth century was both pivotal and
definitive in the history of the formation of the English canon, its underlying processes,
and its means of distribution and consumption. There was a conscious effort to establish
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