Untitled - witz cultural

294HYPERTEXT 3.0 invisible. At the time, however, I never considered discussing Melvill's sermonsas literary texts rather than as historical sources, and when I mentionedto colleagues that his works seemed in some ways superior to Newman's, noneof us considered the implications of that remark for a concept of literature.Remarks by colleagues, even those who specialized in Victorian literature,made clear that paying close attention to such texts was in some way eccentricand betokened a capacity to endure reading large amounts of necessarilyboring "background material." When I taught a course in Anglo-Americannonfiction some fifteen years after first discovering Melvill, I assigned one ofhis sermons, "The Death of Moses," for students to read in the company ofworks by Thomas Carlyle and Henry David Thoreau. Reading Melvill's sermonfor an official course given under the auspices of the department of English,they assumed that it was a work of literature and treated it as such. Considering"The Death of Moses," which has probably never before appeared inan English course, as a work of "real" literature, my students, it became clear,assumed that Melvill's writing possessed a certain canonical status.The varieties of status that belonging to the canon confers-social, political,economic, aesthetic-cannot easily be extricated one from the others.Belonging to the canon is a guarantee of quality, and that guarantee of highaesthetic quality sewes as a promise, a contract, that announces to the viewer,"Here is something to be enjoyed as an aesthetic object. Complex, difficult,privileged, the object before you has been winnowed by the sensitive few andthe not-so-sensitive many, and it will repa.yout attention. You will receive afrisson; at least you're supposed to, and if you dont, well, perhaps there'ssomething wrong with your apparatus." Such an announcement of status bythe poem, painting, building, sonata, or dance that has appeared ensconcedwithin a canon serves, as I have indicated, a powerful separating purpose: itimmediately stands forth, different, better, to be valued, loved, enjoyed. It isthe wheat winnowed from the chaff, the rare survivor, and has all the privilegesofsuch survival.Anyone who has studied literature in a secondary school or university inthe Western world knows what that means. It means that the works in thecanon get read, read by neophyte students and expert teachers. It also meansthat to read these privileged works is a privilege and a sign of privilege. It isalso a sign that one has been canonized oneself-beautified by the experienceof being introduced to beauty, admitted to the ranks of those of the innercircle who are acquainted with the canon and can judge what belongs anddoes not. Becoming acquainted with the canon, with those works at the cen-