How is it decided which of today’s modern literature will become tomorrow’s classics?

The New York Time’s has one. Barnes and Noble has one. Just about every place that has to do with books wither it be publishers, book sellers, critics, they all have a Best Sellers List. They could range from books bought most often to books that are published most. There is a term for the list that we speak of and it is called a Literary Canon.


I had never hear the term until I started doing research for this blog. Wisegeek.com defines a Literary Cannon as " refers to a classification of literature. It is a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place. For example, there can be a literary canon comprised of works from a particular country, or works written within a specific set of years, or even a collection of works that were all written during a certain time period and within a certain region. In this way, a literary canon establishes a collection of similar or related literary works.”
George P Landow said in his article titled the Victorian Web literature, history, and culture in the age of Victoria

Belonging to the canon confers status, social, political,economic,aesthetic, none of which can easily be extricated from the others. Belonging to the canon is a guarantee of quality, and that guarantee of high aesthetic quality serves 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 and the not-so-sensitive many, and it will repay your attention. You will receive pleasure; at least you're supposed to, and if you don't, well, perhaps there's something off with your apparatus." Such an announcement of status by the poem, painting, or building, sonata, or dance that has appeared ensconced within a canon serves a powerful separating purpose: it immediately stands forth, different, better, to be valued, loved, and enjoyed. It is the wheat winnowed from the chaff, the rare survivor, and it has all the privileges of such survival.

This statement almost implies that the cannon knows more about literature than the reads ever will. The cannon will tell you the best books to read so you will not waste your time wanting to read anything else. But what about the books that don’t make the “cut”? Who is to say that they are not worth reading? Is it possible to do away with such a thing as the cannon? No because then we would not have a standard to hold anything up against.

George Landow closed his article with the following comment.

One cannot simply proclaim the end of canons and hence do away with their bad effects, since they can no more be done away with or ended by proclamation than the laws of perception or the laws of gravity. Grandiose announcements that one is doing away with The Canon fall into two categories, resembling either the announcements, doomed to failure, that one is no longer going to speak in prose or those of the censor that in totalitarian fashion tell others what they cannot read. Doing away with the canon leaves one not with freedom but with hundreds of thousands of undiscriminated and hence unnoticeable works, with works we cannot see or notice or read. We must therefore learn to live with them, appreciate them, benefit from them, but, above all, remain suspicious of them. (Landow)

Who decides which literary works make the cut and end up on the canon? Is there a board of directors sitting somewhere reading everything that was printed and compiling the list? Who actually started the list and why? When I was looking for information regarding these very questions the answers were very vague. The only real answer that I could find dated back to the 30’s and the conception of the canon. In “The canon in the classroom: students’ experiences of texts from other times.”by MARK A. PIKE he talks about how in England back in the 1930 there was a small circle of critics in Cambridge that developed the cannon. They were Leavis, Richards, and Eliot. These three men decided that only the intellectual elite should make the judgment of which books we should read.

While they were in England starting the canon here in the US they were trying to start a canon for the public schools. They wanted to make sure that the texts that were on the reading list held up to the Christian values they were trying to uphold. Even today in our schools there are reading lists and while most people don’t think about it, what books the schools order or the teachers assign as reading material has a lot to do with the canon.

The question that is was foremost in my mind as I did this research is can we change which books belong on the canon? How much influence does the general book buying public have? Books make it on to the cannon by how often it is recommended and read. Schools have an influence when they order text books and assign reading lists. The media influence the canon every time a well know spokesperson recommends a book or puts in on their book club. If we as a literary community decided to put a book that was passed by or overlooked by the “Literary elite” on the cannon could it be accomplished simply by buying enough copies?

Works Cited

The canon in the class room by Mark A Pike. J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2002, VOL. 35, NO. 3, 355–370
George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University, The Victorian web literature, history, & culture in the age of Victoria. http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/canon/litcan.html
wisegeek.com
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-literary-canon.htm

quote response

"Othello: An honorable murderer, if you will, For naught I did in hate, but all in honor." (Shakespeare 1035)

He is trying to justify murder. He loved her and he didn't want to lose her.

Blog 20 Quote Response

"Othello: Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again." (Shakespeare 984)

I like this line because it shows how much he loves her. It shows that he thinks that there is chaos everywhere when he is not with her. She keeps his life peaceful.

Internet Search Process Affects Cognition, Emotion blog 19

That's a catchy title. Internet Search Process Affects Cognition Emotion. I ran across this article while conducting a search to see how the Internet affects reading habits. This article stopped me because it made it wonder.

In the article they talk about how your emotions change based on if you are using a search engine to find something vs. just surfing the web.

"Nearly 73 percent of all American adults use the Internet on a daily basis, according to a 2009 Pew Internet and American Life Project survey. Half of these adults use the Web to find information via search engines, while 38 percent use it to pass the time. In a recent study, University of Missouri researchers found that readers were better able to understand, remember and emotionally respond to material found through "searching" compared to content found while "surfing."(Science Daily (Nov. 5, 2009.

The article goes on to talk about how advertisers could use this information to better utilize the ad space on the Internet. They brought up a valid point that it would make sense to place their ads on websites that get the most hits. But then the question becomes was this really a study regarding your emotions and the Internet or just another way for companies to push their products into consumers line of vision?

Blog 18 Act I-II Quote response

"Brabantino:
O thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter? Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her? For I'll refer me to all things of sense, If she in chains of magic were not bound Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy so opposite to marriage that she shunned the wealthy curled darlings of our nation," (Shakespeare 947)

This quote stood out to me the most because I have two nieces and I know that no matter whom they choose to wed their father would not think they are good enough. It seems that in order to justify the choice that his daughter has made Barbantino thinks that she is under some sort of spell. That there is no way that she would make such a decision on her own. He is almost telling them that she is too young to know her own mind on such a matter.

Blog 16 O- scene response

I chose the scene at the end of the movie. The one where is O is standing on the porch looking at Hugo and all the pieces finally fall into place. He figures out that he had been played. He lost sight of what he knew to be true and instead followed what others were telling him were true.

In life we all face those times. Times when we are torn between what we know to be absolute and the information we get from outside sources. Sometime those outside influences make us doubt what is right in front of us. It makes us question ourselves.

It is those times holding steadfast to your moral compass and to what you know logically, make the difference between a right decision and one you could come to regret later.

Blog 17.

Mrs Hale: I could've come. I stayed away because it weren't cheerful - and that's why i ought to have come. I-I've never like this place. Maybe because it's down in a hollow and you don't see the road. I dunno what it is but it's a lonesome place and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes. I can see now-

When ever something unexpected happens we all sit down with a lot of could have and should have's. Mrs Hale when she was referring to the woman, she used her maiden name. She used the name of the girl she used to know and was close to. It was almost as if she could bring back her childhood friend just by using her name.