John Bowen
English 401: Intro to Grad Studies
Dr. Strickland
Short paper: Literary Texts and Canons
27 September 1999
You will not find on these pages an elegant essay on textual scholarship and canonicity. Instead, you will
find a student trying to come to grips with these two subjects, which at times seem unrelated, or distantly
related at best. Not helping matters is my personal history of English studies. My undergraduate education
in English did not address textual scholarship at all; and although I read canonical works as an undergrad, I
did not study issues of canonization and learned about the canon debate only in passing. So if it seems I’m
playing catch-up here, it’s because I am.
The Current Conditions of Textual Scholarship and Canonicity
Of the two areas of study, textual scholarship seems to be the more stable. The theories which have
supported textual scholarship seem to have changed slowly, and current textual theory seems to be making
its way into the discipline of textual scholarship only by degrees. The waters of textual scholarship appear
to be relatively calm, though some significant changes may be predicted for the not-too-distant future. I
will discuss these later.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the issue of canons and canonicity has been a raging debate in
English studies for about 20 years, and it seems the debate will go on. Contemporary English scholars have
questioned canons and canonicity from many angles, and all the questions have not yet been answered.
Theorists have speculated on how canons are made; whether a literary canon is useful in any way; whether
canons are inevitable in one form or another; whether the literary canon is a tool of repression, and if so,
what is the nature of its repression; whether it would be preferable to retain, expand or eliminate the literary
canon; who or what is responsible for creation of the canon; what can or should replace the canon at the
center of English studies; and the list goes on.
Today, the debate has reached a point where some of the criticism is not being directed at canons and
canonicity; but instead, at the canon debate itself. Questions such as: Have critics of the literary canon
misplaced their criticism--should they focus their criticism on curricula rather than the canon? (Docherty
167) Does today’s debate about the canon present a real crisis in the field of English studies, or have we
simply reached another point in history where the old ideas (as represented by the canon) no longer have
the relevance they once did and it’s time to reach out for new ideas that will meet our present and future
cultural needs? (Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon, 8) Have canon-critics misunderstood human
nature in arguing that readers should not attempt to judge texts, so that they might not fall prey to making
decisions about “aesthetic value” that inevitably lead to canon-creation? (Guillory xiv)
Textual Scholarship and Canonicity: A History
As far as the history of textual scholarship is concerned, I won’t go into much detail, for two reasons:
1. D.C. Greetham has already done a good job outlining the history of textual scholarship in his essay
“Textual Scholarship” in our Gibaldi text.
2. In the field of textual scholarship, changes have happened slowly, and there have been relatively few
major developments in the field, most of which have occurred within the last 200 years. These major
developments include the dispute between eclecticism vs. geneticism, the New Bibliography, and
“social textual criticism.” All of these are explained clearly in Greetham’s essay.
The important thing that seems to arise from the history of textual scholarship is the contemporary
recognition that textual scholarship is essentially an act of literary criticism (Greetham 122). Thus we see
an intersection between the stodgy world of textual scholarship and the quick-moving field of critical
theory.
As a result of this intersection, both current and future textual theories will almost certainly have an impact
on textual scholarship. For one thing, eclectic editing seems doomed. In today’s critical environment, it
seems hard to support the notion that a single editor can painstakingly recreate an author’s intentions and
produce an ideal eclectic text that can serve as “a norm against which other copies...may be checked”
(Williams and Abbott 8).
In addition, technological changes promise to bring even more changes to the field of textual scholarship.
The full range of possibilities (and problems) of electronic texts have yet to be fully explored. One can
only imagine what sort of texts may be produced in the future, or how past and present texts may be altered
in a new, electronic environment. These are important issues that textual scholars will have to deal with;
and, as I will argue later, their handling of these issues may have an impact on canonicity in the future.
In terms of the history of canons and canonicity, there seems to be broad disagreement among scholars
about how today’s literary canon was created. In our Gibaldi textbook, Robert Scholes argues that:
By the end of the 19th century two simultaneous processes (or two facets of the same process) had
led to the establishment of a literary canon. One of these was the separate, superior status claimed
for works of verbal imagination, which, thus empowered, constituted a literary canon. The other
was the professionalization of teaching in the newly established (and in particular the American)
universities and graduate schools (146).
However, other scholars point to different developments as crucial in the creation of the contemporary
literary canon. In The Making of the Modern Canon, Jan Gorak describes a common conviction among
critics of the canon: that the literary canon was created out of a friendly political arrangement among
academics, publishers, reviewers and others who have had an interest in maintaining current cultural and
political institutions. He summarizes Jane Tompkins’ and Richard Brodhead’s studies of the canonization
of Nathaniel Hawthorne, declaring that Tompkins’ and Brodhead’s “demystification of canon
formation...has uncovered a complex system of promotion, publicity, and politics” (2).
Gorak himself, however, disagrees with this view, arguing that “...the story of canon formation does not
always tell of an evolving and stabilizing consensus” (4). Rather, canons have been formed and re-formed
throughout history, surviving and evolving not because of any institutional or authoritarian dictate, but
rather through acts of criticism. In Gorak’s view, “canon can become a focus for debate in any period in
which artists, critics, philosophers or theologians try to match an inherited body of texts, practices, or ideas
to their perceived present and future cultural needs” (4).
Gorak admits that his view puts canons in a more sympathetic light than do the views of most critics of
canons and canonicity. He essentially says that the current canon debate is far from new, that these
discussions of what constitutes the canon have been going on for hundreds and thousands of years. Of
course, underlying this argument is the assumption that some sort of canon is inevitable as a means of
transmitting works of cultural value to the next generation, which is an opinion that other canon-critics
would take exception with.
Another commentator, John Guillory, offers a different view of how the canon came to be in his book,
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Guillory’s narrative is summarized rather
briefly--and unfavorably--by J.G. Saunders:
In the beginning colonizers (Graeco-Roman) used literary texts as a means of imposing their
cultural values on subjected races. However, the major significance of these canonical texts
turned out to be not cultural but linguistic. The tendency for canons to transmit not literary values
but socially privileged forms of language continued as a constant feature of English education
until American universities started offering courses in ‘composition’. Students and their
employers only then realized that a marketable control of standard English (adequate for ‘the
professional-managerial classes, the administrators and the bureaucrats’, p. 79) could be acquired
without studying masterpieces. The real crisis in the Humanities (according to this narrative)
stems from the divide in the curriculum between ‘Literature and Composition’ (130).
Of course, it’s likely that many other opinions exist as to how the canon came to be, and I imagine that
each of these opinions informs its adherents’ views on what should be done (with? to? about?) the
contemporary literary canon.
Finding the Ties That Bind Textual Scholarship and Canonicity
In my readings on textual scholarship and canonicity, I have not found any arguments that try to make a
direct link between classical or eclectic textual scholarship and canon-formation; however, canonization
and classical and eclectic textual scholarship seem to be built on similar assumptions about the “value” of
texts.
Classical and eclectic editors try to produce an “ideal copy” of a text, a goal based on the idea that one copy
of a text can be “superior” to another, if only in the sense that it comes closest to the author’s original
intention (Greetham 105). In a similar way, canons can be seen as founded on the notion that some works
of literature are of greater value than others (Morris x-xi).
But when Northrop Frye questioned the assumption that some literary works are of greater value than
others, the floodgates were open to direct questioning of the modern literary canon. Who made the canon?
Why does it exist? Whose purposes does it serve? Should the canon be changed? If so, how? Or should
the canon be completely dismantled, along with any notions of canonicity?
One aspect of the relationship between textual scholarship and canonicity in 1999:
History has demonstrated that, as texts move from one technological form into another, a de facto process
of canonization occurs, simply because it is not possible for every text to be transferred from the old form
to the new. As a result, when editors publish a particular text in a new form, they are engaging in de facto
canonization, essentially giving preferred status to a given text (or specific variation of a text). Sometimes,
the choice of publishing a given text in a new form is in opposition to publishing other variations of the
same text in the new form, and it is always in opposition to publishing every other possible text in the new
medium. (For example, in deciding to publish a critical edition of a particular text in a new medium, an
editor has made a decision not to publish a critical edition of every other text in that new medium at that
time. An editor can publish only one text at a time.)
As we enter the age of electronic books, these questions become important. What texts will survive the
switch to the new medium? What texts will be lost? What value will hypertext give to textual scholarship,
especially as it relates to the comparative study of variant texts?
Works Cited
Docherty, Thomas. Rev. of Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, by John Guillory.
Modern Language Review 89 (1994): 167-168.
Gorak, Jan. The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crisis of a Literary Idea. London and Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Athlone, 1991.
Greetham, D.C. “Textual Scholarship.” Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures.
Ed. Joseph Gibaldi. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1992. 103-137.
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1993.
Morris, Timothy. Becoming Canonical in American Poetry. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1995.
Saunders, J.G. Rev. of Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation, by John Guillory.
Review of English Studies 47 (1996): 129-130.
Scholes, Robert. “Canonicity and Textuality.” Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and
Literatures. Ed. Joseph Gibaldi. New York: The Modern Language Association of America,
1992. 138-158.
Williams, William Proctor and Craig S. Abbott. An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies.
New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1989.