From: kamorgan@athena.mit.edu (Keith Morgan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon
Date: 16 Aug 92 22:13:19 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I am afraid that this fascinating thread may have gotten too far away
for me to offer any relevant comments. That is a problem with lurking
when things get interesting. Well, for what it's worth here are six
reflections on the discussion so far:

1. The idea of a "canon": I was relieved that someone finally objected
to the use of this word. With its theological overtones this word
falsely implies an idea of unchanging and inaccessible works. It is
also, more often than not, used in a pejorative sense. Asserting that
there is a "canon" leads to the idea that curriculum struggles are
ideological struggles; furthermore, couching discussion in "canonical"
terms leads to the assertion that great books are merely
"texts" without messages of their own. As to the idea that the
professional teachers of English and other "literatures" are reactive
defenders of the status-quo, I invite a perusal of *PMLA* Volume 106:6
(November 1991). This issue contains the program for the 107th
convention of the MLA and a glance over the discussions indicates far
less time on Hardy or Melville or any other members of this
"canon"than those "submerged" authors that are supposedly being ignored.

2. Great books and aestheticism: Those who have been defending the
worth of studying the great books of the tradition seem to me to
sometimes view such reading as the armchair equivalent of a visit to
a museum. In this view the books become mere icons and not, as they
might be, vehicles of inspiration and liberation from our conventional
time-bound thinking.

3. Liberal and illiberal education: Those who would simply toss over
what they perceive as "canonical" for writers of their own race or
gender seem to me to be missing the point of liberal education. I
would think that in its best sense liberal education is a liberation
from our conventional beliefs about life, an education that brings us
face to face with disturbing challenges to our deepest and apparently
surest moral commitments. It is not that black students should *not*
read James Baldwin or W.E.B. DuBois, it is that white students *should*
But shouldn't there also be a time when the books that have been
thought to be representative of certain human issues would be read and
discussed in college classrooms?

4. The horizon of the familiar:
I think that students genuinely in search of the
most comprehensive, the most liberating, and the most fulfilling
education would be delighted to encounter teachers and books that
upset their way of thinking. To retreat to a personal "canon" of
favorite authors seems to abandon the idea that there is anything to
be taught. In a similar fashion does not all this railing against the
"canon" imply also some hegemonic world view? In the literary world
some of the sharpest and most bitter arguments have been between those
dead white European males: there never has been, and never will be
complete agreement.

5. Politics and the novel: There has also been some discussion
about the political content or agenda of certain novels. I submit that
this tack takes the reader far from the essence of things. Sure there
is political content to novels but whether it is deliberate or, as
current critical theory would have it, a subconscious manifestation of
the ideological structures of society, does not necessarily detract
from the artistic accomplishment of a tale that speaks through the
centuries to us. If a radical Trotskyite writes a novel that still
speaks to us long after such political positions are forgotten, then
it wasn't about politics, but humanity.

6. Other traditions, an example:
 Almost all of this discussion of "canons" has focused
on literature but I wonder if the example of liberal and liberating
education cannot be better made by looking at another tradition.
Political philosophy begins with Socrates and continues to the present
day. All of what can be called the "tradition" of political philosophy
is, in one sense, a response to the challenges posed by Plato. The
famous anecdote that all philosophy is but a footnote to Plato isn't
quite true but it is indicative of Plato's influence. All
of the tradition down to, say, Nietzche or Heidegger, can be seen as a
continuing argument with the premises laid down by Plato. Aristotle
took issue with Plato; Hobbes took issue with Aristotle; Rousseau took
issue with Hobbes; and Nietzsche took issue with Plato. This is the
great philosophical conversation that one can participate in by
reading these thinkers. What would the anti-traditionalists do with
these old books? pretty much what is being suggested in English
Departments and in r.a.b. - throw them over for more current and  more
congenial works. This will be comforting, to find writers that speak
to our particular experiences, our particular complaints, but will
not all this accomplish nothing more than reinforcing our current
prejudices? For better or worse, we are all pretty much thorough-going
liberal democrats. Most of our arguments about politics are arguments
framed within the parameters of liberal democracy. I really do not
understand how someone can claim understanding of democracy without
ever having read any of the classical critiques of democracy, from
Plato to Montesquieu; in a similar fashion, is it possible to
understand any of our current novels without a familiarity of the
tradition from whence they have come?  

--Keith
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Keith Morgan		      | Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
kamorgan@athena.mit.edu       |                          H.L. Mencken
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