The Virtues and Faults of a Literary Canon

           The literary canon as most of us have likely encountered it, either in secondary school or somewhere in this country’s labyrinthine higher education system, is a relatively recent creation—one which overwhelmingly, though I think not wrongly, emphasizes prose and poetry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, curricula across all levels of schooling have begun to move away from these great works of the past in favor of what is often called simply the modern or the contemporary, the purportedly more relatable. In part, this movement seems to respond to a number of frankly accurate and disquieting criticisms of the canon (though we must concede that one such comprehensive and cohesive body of art has never existed in the first place) which have arisen in various contexts, academic and otherwise, over the last fifty years or so. The literary works which have been the focus of secondary and university level study as well as the pedagogical, interpretive, and methodological structures which have been built around them do positively reek of the different latent kinds of classism, racism, and sexism which formerly dominated our academic and cultural institutions. That the academy and its curricula have been complicit in the values of the past, even when we from our contemporary vantage point cringe at the thought of these values having any place in a classroom, we should find neither surprising nor particularly galling. Certainly, any literary cannon which we establish in our schools as the basis for future study ought to be made both more malleable and more inclusive than previous models. The various biases which unavoidably inhabit the collection of literary works which have traditionally been taught cannot be removed, however, without considerable damage to our students’ understanding of their country’s history, its cultural and political legacies, and their own places within these (sometimes deeply unfortunate) inheritances.

            I have often heard it argued, both by educators and by students, that any number of contemporary novels are possessed of comparable quality to the works of previous centuries and that students find the writing of recent decades to be more easily navigable, comprehensible, and, of course, relatable. Thus, they either openly contend or imply by silence that the literary canon as they have understood it through their experience of the education system ought to be disposed of—if not entirely, then at least mostly—and replaced with equally praiseworthy and what are often perceived as more entertaining modern works.  That the primary function of literature, as this argument plainly articulates or merely intimates depending on the speaker, is to entertain its’ readers is an idea which I find as repellent as it is unuseful. My response to these sentiments is that the inclusion of a literary work in a canon or curriculum speaks less to its quality as a work of art than to its value in a historical and cultural context which extends into the present— a value derived largely from the conversations which arise and take place around it, its central position in a culturally important dialogue. Undoubtedly, the literary productions of the last couple decades include works of exceeding quality and immaculate construction. Perhaps we ought to consider the incorporation of select modern works into the canon on this basis. Perhaps for others we ought to leave more time for conversations to emerge and develop around them, both inside and outside of academia. Then again, perhaps we ought to look to the past and recognize that innumerable works of exceptional artistic quality are doubtlessly now lost to us, quietly drowned in the stream of time. We are aware of this loss, though we cannot feel the weight of it, because of works which the ancient Greeks make frequent reference to (these references often contained in the remaining fragments of early literary critics like Aristotle), works of literature which were not only central to the shaping of important writers and thinkers, but which were the cultural touchstones of dead civilizations, the catalysts for discourse which is no longer possible and utterly irretrievable to us. How many more works of quality failed to connect with a substantial readership in the ancient world and silently disappeared? What kinds of value can they have possessed?

            Nevertheless, to merely preserve the literary canon as it has existed in conservative scholarly circles up to this point would be to impress upon students viewpoints which make up a meager and frankly inadequate sliver of the human experience, to expose them solely to perspectives which simultaneously emanate from and privilege white, male, and upper-class voices. The canon can be a more adaptable and amoebic body of work than our academic institutions have formerly allowed, and we ought to actively strive toward its diversification for the sake of establishing a more complete corpus of art which might in turn facilitate more complete modes of understanding and experience, more complete lives. At the same time, we cannot apologize for or, more importantly, heal the incompleteness of history. We cannot retrieve those voices which both time and the cultures which preceded us have condemned to oblivion. We should continue to read and to teach Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Wordsworth, not because their works represent to us some kind of universal or ideal portrait of the human condition, but because their works have echoed down the centuries and continue to inform our conversations, our understanding of the past, and our connections with one another. I fear that the pedagogical trends which seem to be swiftly erasing (at the very least, devaluing) the great literary legacy of previous centuries in the West will succeed for a time in doing so. Before more meaningful and constructive conversations about the content of literary curricula can take place, we must do better than we have done so far in this century in cultivating an academy and a culture which values literature sufficiently—that is to say, a society which values literature as a mode of artistic expression possessed of the power to transform and to instruct, one which, with our participation, can help us to lead materially, intellectually, and spiritually better lives. We must, at least in this matter, eschew the shallow distractions of entertainment and emphasize the capacity of art to effect deep, consequential changes within us.