As student and as teacher of literature, I don’t have a problem with the principle of there being a canon.
I think canonization is less a matter of gatekeeping and more a matter of sedimentation – almost an inevitability, really. As time passes and more and more literature is produced, history passes judgement: the worthy continues downstream, read year after year for any number of reasons; the not-so-worthy settles to the bottom. There’s nothing wrong with this process, per-se – a culture can’t carry with it each and every text it ever produced, so it needs such a mechanism. Canonization comes unstuck, though, when the ‘river’ is artificially narrowed and when worthy ‘sediments’ are prevented from continuing downstream, both of which have happened in our history. This isn’t an indictment of canonization – it’s an indictment of us.
More than this, I think to teach is to pass authorship of Spaceship Earth’s story; a society’s story; a culture’s story from one generation to the next. Such a handover requires a) teaching re. the chapters we’ve written so far and b) learning re. the wisdom and skills we’ll need to keep writing new and as-yet-unimaginable chapters. Given its sheer depth and breadth, (a) requires two things: a measure of consensus and a measure of editorial anthologization. This is precisely the role a canon serves – a canon is a collectively-agreed-upon anthology designed to encapsulate our Sunday Best to facilitate transmission of collective identity via shared story. Yes, we’ve been rubbish editors. But again: this isn’t an indictment of canonization – it’s an indictment of us.
Hey Alex, just wanted to respond to the first paragraph of your post. I agree “strongly” with your comment on the “worthy” but in addressing this, I simplify it more so to be “the popular” remains on top of these “canonical texts” (to which I too have no problem with). There is a reason why these texts are canon, why they are deemed popular and I feel like it strongly aligns with canon being these key resources enable our students to gain wisdom and skills to maybe in the future write “new” canonical texts. Much of the drama I have learned that comes from these texts is from the authors and their own personal perspectives and agendas that they have written about. Prior to this program, I thought Shakespeare used to be the “holy grail” of Canonical texts but I didn’t realize there is quite some backlash in choosing to teach his works over other more “modern day texts” that may be perhaps categorized as “non-canonical”. Anyways thanks for your thought provoking post!