Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

The notion of literary canons has been perhaps one of the most debated issues in
academia over the past 20 years, and there is a vast array of secondary sources from
which to choose. Apart from a number of essays from prominent authors and literary
critics—so-called “canonizers”—over the ages, I decided to focus mainly on 4 books,
two of which retrace the evolution of the English Literary Canon from the Middle Ages
to the nineteenth century. Trevor Ross’ The Making of the English Literary Canon:
From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century provides for a comprehensive
historical account of the various paradigm shifts that have determined canonical criteria
for the last five centuries. While it turns out that in the period covered by this book,
criteria were set according to a belief in absolute aesthetical and historical values, Ross
succeeds in outlining some of the major issues surrounding contemporary debates such as
the various socio-cultural factors prompting canonical revisions; hierarchal ideas of
literary value; the relationship between authors, literary critics, and the marketplace; the
idea of fixed interpretations and meanings literary works, and ideas of set and contingent
evaluative means. In Making the English Canon: Print Capitalism and the Cultural Past,
1700-1770, Jonathan Krammick focuses on what he considers to be an important period
in the establishment of the English literary canon. While Krammick claims that the idea
of a canon of literature came into existence in the middle of the eighteenth century, he
refers specifically to the literary canon in terms of a set of classic, acclaimed texts; he is
not discussing the evolution of the canon in schools. He argues that it is particularly the
issue of “print capitalism” and the commercial concern for the distribution of literary
goods which precipitated the canonization of books and their authors.
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