Debating the Canon is a one-stop collection of the most important conversations regarding the development and future of the literary canon, with essays by T.S. Eliot, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Leo Strauss, Elaine Showalter, Harold Bloom, Elizabeth Meese, and Henry Louis Gates to name but a few. Over the past two decades, the debate over the Great Books has been the central public controversy concerning the cultural content of higher education. Debating the Canon provides the first primary-source overview of these ongoing arguments. Many of these contributions to this debate have achieved "canonical" status themselves. Through their focus on the canon, the full spectrum of approaches to literary studies is represnted here. This collection places the recent debate within a larger context of literary criticism's development of a canon, going back to the eighteenth century. Morrissey's introductions provide context for the conversations, and together comprise a history of the debate over the Great Books.

Lee Morrissey is Professor of English at Clemson University.

Lee Morrissey, Introduction: "The Canon Brawl: Arguments over the Canon"

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1. Joseph Addison (1672-1719): from The Tatler, No. 108 (Thursday, December 15, to Saturday, December 17, 1709)

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2. David Hume (1711-1776): from "Of the Standard of Taste," Essays (1757)

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3. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): from "Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare" (1765)

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4. Red Jacket (c.1750-1830): "Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?" from a speech to the Boston Missionary Society (1828)

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5. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888): from "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," Essays in Criticism (1865)

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6. T.S. Eliot (1888-1965): "Tradition and the Individual Talent," The Sacred Wood (1919)

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7. F.R. Leavis (1895-1978): from Mass Civilization and Minority Culture (1933)

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8. Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001): "Reading and the Growth of the Mind," How to Read a Book (1940)

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9. Erich Auerbach (1892-1957): from "Odysseus' Scar," Mimesis (1946; trans. 1953)

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10. Leo Strauss (1899-1973): from "Persecution and the Art of Writing," Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)

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11. Frantz Fanon (1925-1961): from "On National Culture," Wretched of the Earth (1961)

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12. Theodor Adorno (1903-1969): from "Commitment: The Politics of Autonomous Art," New Left Review (1962)

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13. Chinua Achebe (1930—): "Colonialist Criticism," Hopes and Impediments (1974, 1988)

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14. Elaine Showalter (1941—): from "The Female Tradition," A Literature of Their Own (1977)

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15. Annette Kolodny (1941—): from Á Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts," New Literary History (1980)

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16. Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002): from "The Field of Cultural Production, Or: The Economic World Reversed," The Field of Cultural Production (1983)

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17. William J. Bennett (1943–): from "To Reclaim a Legacy," American Education (1985)

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18. Elizabeth Meese (1943–): from "Sexual Politics and Critical Judgment," in Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller, Eds., After Strange Texts (1985)

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19. Jane Tompkins (1940–): from "'But Is It Any Good?': The Institutionalization of Literary Value," Sensational Designs (1985)

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20. Martin Bernal (1937–): from "Volume I: Introduction," Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987)

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21. Allan Bloom (1936-1992): "The Student and the University," The Closing of the American Mind (1987)

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22. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1928–): from "Rise of the Fragmented Curriculum," Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987)

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23. Frank Kermode (1919–): from "Canon and Period," History and Value (1988)

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24. Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1932–): from "Contingencies of Value," Contingencies of Value (1988)

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25. Arnold Krupat (1941–): from "The Concept of the Canon," The Voice in the Margin (1989)

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26. Charles Altieri (1942–): from "An Idea and Ideal of Literary Canon," Canons and Consequences (1990)

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27. Alvin Kernan (1923–): from "Introduction: The Death of Literature," Death of Literature (1990)

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28. Roger Kimball (1953–): from "Speaking Against the Humanities," Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (1990; rev. 1998)

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29. Paul Lauter (1932–): from "Canon Theory and Emergent Practice," Canons and Contents (1991)

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30. Katha Pollitt (1949–): "Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Me...," The Nation (1991)

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31. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1950–): from "The Master's Pieces: On Canon Formation and the African-American Tradition," Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992)

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32. Gerald Graff (1937–): from "Introduction: Conflict in America," Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (1992)

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33. John Guillory: from "Preface" and "Canonical and Noncanonical: The Current Debate," Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993)

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34. Vassilis Lambropoulos (1953–): from "The Rites of Interpretation," The Rise of Eurocentrism (1993)

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35. Edward Said (1935-2003): from "Connecting Empire to Secular Interpretation," Culture and Imperialism (1994)

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36. Michael Bérubé (1961–): from "Higher Education and American Liberalism," Public Access (1994)

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37. Harold Bloom (1930–): from "An Elegy for the Canon," The Western Canon: The Books and the School of Ages (1994)

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38. Jacques Derrida (1930–): from "To Whom To Give To," The Gift of Death (1992, trans. 1995)

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39. Marjorie Garber (1944–): from "Greatness," Symptoms of Culture (1998)

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40. Richard Rorty (1931–): from "On The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature," Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1998)

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41. Robert Scholes (1929–): from "A Flock of Cultures: A Trivial Proposal," The Rise and Fall of English (1998)

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42. Azar Nafisi (1950–): from Sections 16, 17, 18, and 19 of Part II, "Gatsby," Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2002)

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Permissions

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Index

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