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Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

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the literary canon, and critics and teachers were recognized as authorities whose role<br />

determined what should be read and how, as well as defending the importance of the<br />

canon itself. Still, the forum for all levels of canonical discourse and readership remained<br />

chiefly that of the academic institution. As Ross suggests, canonical literature became a<br />

sign of “good breeding,” which made the instructed consumption of literature as<br />

important as its production:<br />

This deepening of the social significance of the reading activity<br />

altered the nature of critical discourse, whose varied functions<br />

shifted from aiding the production to regulating the transmission of<br />

canonical works, from prescribing how works ought to be<br />

composed to supervising how they ought to be read and judged,<br />

and from promoting the general symbolic value of writing to<br />

ensuring the legitimacy of an autonomous cultural field. (210)<br />

There is a now common view amongst critics that literary texts contain “social<br />

power,” or “social energy,” which is unleashed and disseminated by the continuous<br />

readings and interpretations of critics and scholars through a series of cultural<br />

negotiations and exchanges (Greenblatt Shakespearean 1-7, Ross 213). According to<br />

Ross, an example of the role played by critics is Addison's annotated version of Milton’s<br />

Paradise Lost published in The Spectator, which presupposes that the text—and its<br />

“social energy”—can only be explained by a critic (218) and soon, it became necessary to<br />

have one canon for consumption and a different one to serve as a model of production<br />

(221). Literary criticism becomes an indispensable tool for the reading and interpretation<br />

of works of literature, as well as conducting scholarly research, thus instituting the<br />

perpetual relationship--and/or collaboration–between trends in criticism and literary<br />

movements.<br />

36

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