Debating the Canon: A Reader from Addison to Nafisi [Hardcover]

Over the past two decades, the debate over the 'Great Books' has been one of the key public controversies concerning the cultural content of higher education. Debating the Canon provides a primary-source overview of these ongoing arguments. Many of these contributions to this debate have achieved 'canonical' status themselves; through the focus on the canon, the full spectrum of approaches to literary studies can be seen in the essays. Therefore, this collection places the recent debate within a larger context of literary criticism's development of a canon, going back to the eighteenth century.Introduction: 'Canon, Repertoire, or, What's in a Metaphor?' 'Literature and the Dignity of Man' (1709); R.Steele Selections from the 'Pleasures of the Imagination' series (1711); J.Addison 'Of the Standard of Taste' (1757); D.Hume 'Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare' (1765); S.Johnson 'We Never Quarrel About Religion' (1828); R.J.Iroquois 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' (1865); M.Arnold 'Hebraism and Hellenism' (1869); M.Arnold 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919)' T.S.Eliot 'Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture' (1930); F. R.Leavis 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' (1940); W.Benjamin 'Reading and the Growth of the Mind' (1940); M.Adler 'Odysseus' Scar' (1953); E.Auerbach 'National Culture' (1961); F.Fanon 'Commitment' (1962); T.Adorno 'On the Abolition of the English Department' (1968); N.W.Thiong'o 'Colonialist Criticism' (1974); C.Achebe 'The Female Tradition' (1977); E.Showalter 'A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts' (1980); A.Kolodny 'Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors' (1981); N.Baym 'The Field of Cultural Production' (1983); P.Bourdieu 'To Reclaim a Legacy: Text of Report on Humanities in Education' (1984); W.Bennett 'Sexual Politics and Critical Judgment' (1985); E.Meese ''But is it Any Good?': The Institutionalization of Literary Value' (1985); ló˛