Untitled - witz cultural

295RECONFIGURINGLITERARYEDUCATIONter, allows (indeed, forces) one to move to the center or, if not absolutely tothe center, at least much closer to it than one had been before.This canon, it turns out, appears far more limited to the neophyte readerthan to the instructor, for few of the former read beyond the reading list ofthe course, few know that one can read beyond, believing that what lies beyondis by definition dull, darkened, dreary. One can look at this power, thisterritoriality of the canonized work, in two ways. Gaining entrance clearlyallows a work to be enjoyed; failing to do so thrusts it into the limbo of theunnoticed, unread, unenjoyed, unexisting. Canonization, in other words,permits the member of the canon to enter the gaze and to exist. Like thepainting accepted as a painting and not, say, a mere decorative obiect oreven paint spill, it receives a conceptual frame; and although one can remarkupon the obvious fact that frames confine and separate, it is precisely suchappearance within the frame that guarantees its aesthetic contemplationitscapacity to make the viewer respect it.The very narrowness of the frame and the very confinement within sucha small gallery of framed objects produces yet another effect, for the framedobject, the member of the canon, gains an intensification not only from itssegregation but also because, residing in comparative isolation, it gains splendor.Canonization both permits a work to be seen and, since there are so relativelyfew objects thus privileged, canonization intensifies the gaze; potentiallydistracting objects are removed from the spectator's view, and those thatare left benefit from receiving exclusive attention.Within academia, however, to come under the gaze, works must be teachable.They must conform to whichever currently fashionable pedagogy allowsthe teacher to discuss this painting or that poem. In narrating the formationof the modernist canon, Hugh Kenner explains that "when Pound was workingin his normal way, by lapidary steten'Lent, New Critics could find nothingwhatever to say about him. Since 'Being-able-to-say-about' is a pedagogic criterion,he was largely absent from a canon pedagogues were defining. So wasWilliams, and wholly. What can Wit, Tension, hony enable you so say aboutThe Red Wheelbarrowl"6 Very little, one answers, and the same is true for thepoetry of Swinburne, which has many similarities to that of Stevens butwhich remained unteachable for many trained in New Criticism. In paintingthe situation is much the same: critics of purely formalist training and persuasionhad nothing to say about the complex semiotics of Pre-Raphaelitepainting. To them it didni really seem to be art.Thematic as well as formal filters render individual texts teachable. As