Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

Boccaccio, Sidney, Dryden, and Johnson who vouched for the inclusion of works that
could be said to align themselves with such standards. The fundamental notions that
literature should be both pleasing and foster virtuous behavior remained prevalent even
though other criteria evolved to echo changes in literary production. For the Age of
Reason, morality and decency operated as major determining factors for the acceptance
of works into the vernacular Canon.
Using Greenblatt’s and Guillory’s terminology, these cultural negotiations
between author, text, audience and institutional authorities establish a historical
framework to understand the processes of canonization as it occurred in the late
eighteenth century and the way in which the “stock” of literary works as cultural capital
fluctuates through time. This view also coincides with Jauss’ perspective of literary
history as “a process of aesthetic reception and production that takes place in the
realization of literary texts on the part of the receptive reader, the reflective critic, and the
author in his continuing productivity” (1553). In considering the case of early Gothic
works such as The Monk, it is important to take into account the particular characteristics
of the genre. “The Gothic,” Watt points out, "is a hybrid genre, its diverse affiliations
best understood by way of detailed case studies of authors, works, and publishing events,
and via a focus on the kinds of classification made by contemporary critics and
reviewers" (130). Thus, a review of the critical reception of Lewis’ novel should address
the reception of the Gothic novel as a sub-genre of both a minor, i.e. “low” genre, the
novel, as well as a major, i.e. “high” literary movement, Romanticism.
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