October 30, 2006
More on Lawrence and Levine and Canons Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 04:15 PM EST Fred Smoler is right to ask for more specificity in discussing the idea of literary (or other academic) “canons.” Our exchange prompted me to revisit Lawrence Levine’s book The Opening of the American Mind. Critically, Levine argued that “canons do not reside in some protected galaxy of universal truths beyond the reach of temporal events. This is not to say that a canon is defenseless . . .” Levine further specified that “a canon . . . is composed not merely of subject matter but of attitudes toward and ways of approaching that subject matter.”
By way of illustration, he reminded readers that nineteenth-century American colleges tended to use literature as a means of teaching syntax, grammar, and methods of memorization, rather than critical analysis. “During my own student life at the University of Virginia,” wrote Henry Shepherd, president of the College of Charleston, in 1892, “I cannot recall, in my course of instruction in Latin, a single shadowy reminiscence of aesthetic hint, critical suggestion, culture flavor, or stylistics interpretation. It was a mournful and plaintive round of local relations of prepositions . . .”
I agree with Levine that not every new methodology lends equal support to the study of texts. Fred Smoler was right to seek some clarification on that point, as I oversimplified Levine’s original argument.
I’m also persuaded by Levine’s well-documented argument that canonical texts, as well as methodologies, have always been subject to revision. Levine pointed to two editions of an American literature anthology, the first published in 1916, the second in 1963. Of the eight writers featured in the first edition, only three—Poe, Hawthorne and Emerson—made the cut for the second edition. Those who got dropped included Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant; those who were added included Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. If anything, since 1916 (and even since 1963) the canon seems to have expanded, demonstrating a useful elasticity.
The point, above all, is that blind worship of “the canon” may lend therapeutic relief to those who, for whatever reason, fear that their world is slipping away. But this sort of jeremiad ignores the canon’s constant reinvention. No text or methodology is sacred. It needs to withstand the test of time and scrutiny.
|
