The canon — with one ‘n’ not two! — is a collection of works, usually artistic works, i.e., paintings, musical compositions, sculpture, architectures, but most commonly literary works. The “canon” is a list of texts considered to be of enduring value, high quality, and worth studying.
One feature of the canon is that its boundaries are indistinct: its edges are not precisely defined. There has never been a precise and exhaustive list of what is in the canon. There is a feel or intuition about what is in the canon: a casual consensus about which types of things belong in the canon.
The Oxford English Dictionary explains this particular use of the word ‘canon’ as follows:
A body of literary works traditionally regarded as the most important, significant, and worthy of study; those works of esp. Western literature considered to be established as being of the highest quality and most enduring value; the classics.
The OED goes on to note the existence of sub-canons, like a ‘comedy canon’ or a ‘Norwegian canon,’ and the use of canon with other artforms like music or architecture.
This usage of the word ‘canon’ seems to have appeared in the early twentieth century, and become common in the jargon of literary criticism after the middle of the century.
The canon is broad and deep. The genres, centuries, authors, cultures, ethnicities, and spiritual traditions represented in it are numerous. Some who attack the canon imagine it to be narrow, but this is not the case. Even if there is some ambiguity at its margins, it can easily fill vast libraries.
It would be good to devote increased attention to what might be called the “deep canon.” There is a small subset within the canon of material which is often studied. The frequent texts occupy too much space, and thereby edge other texts into the shadows of neglect.
Shakespeare wrote more than thirty plays, but five or ten of them monopolize much of the high school and university reading lists. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is well known, but her The Last Man languishes. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men are often assigned, but what about his The Moon is Down?
Given the institutional habit of assigning repeatedly a limited number of works from the canon, a student may be forgiven for gaining the mistaken perception that the canon is shallow and narrow. When that student later becomes a published scholar, she or he may attack the canon based on that impression.
Not only would the exploration of the full canon demonstrate more creative and more rigorous scholarship, but it would also defend the canon from its detractors.
Despite some vagueness about its borders, the canon still serves the valuable purpose of directing students and instructors to significant texts. To be sure, there is some small element of subjectivity in assigning value to texts — perhaps this bit of subjectivity is responsible for the equivocation about the canon’s boundaries — but it is clear that some texts are of more value than others.
There are different ways to measure a text’s value, and that fact that there may be a little subjectivity in that measurement is no reason to abandon or ignore the larger idea that some texts are worthy of inclusion in the canon and others are not. Bluntly stated: some texts are better than others, objectively.
To explore this notion of objective worth, knowing that there is a bit of subjective evaluation of the objective worth, a number of metrics are in play. One of them is the oft-cited notion of ‘critical thinking.’
Ironically, “critical thinking” is frequently mentioned by those who attack the canon. Yet the canon is the continual and continuous source of critical thought. The notion of ‘critical thinking’ arises from, and is fed by, the canon. The creative tension between Plato and Aristotle, between Augustine and Aquinas, and between the Rabbis in the Talmud is the source and essence of critical thought.
Whoever might wish to arouse critical thought in a student does so best by directing the student’s attention to a text which has value in this regard. A student may learn the skill of critical thought better by examining a text by Raymond Chandler than by examining a text by Laurie Halse Anderson: which is to say that The Big Sleep, as a text, has more intrinsic and inherent value than Speak. Simply put, Chandler offers more to think about that Anderson does.
These two propositions are related: (a) The canon is deeper and broader than is commonly supposed, and (b) the attacks on the canon are ill-founded or unfounded.
Many who assault the canon do so with charges of its alleged narrowness, its alleged shallowness, and its alleged homogeneity. A more rigorous exploration of the canon reveals that that such allegations are untrue, and that therefore such attacks on the canon are baseless.
Ironically, many who assail the canon do so with calls for more or better efforts at teaching students how to “think critically.” The irony is two-fold: First, such assaults on the canon dissolve under the scrutiny of the very critical thought demanded by the assailants; second, the practice of critical thinking is best carried out within the context of the canon.
To think critically, one must have something about which to think. There must be an object toward which critical thinking is directed and on which critical thinking operates. Critical thinking is a form which needs content.
A student who wishes to exercise critical thought will find more and better opportunities to do so with the texts of Hildegard of Bingen than with the texts of Toni Morrison.
A student will learn the skill of critical thinking better from Immanuel Kant than from Frantz Fanon — and as an added benefit, Kant’s critique of imperialism and slavery is more rigorous than Fanon’s.
Simply put, some texts are better and more valuable than others. The canon collects those texts. The fact that there is some ambiguity at the perimeter of the canon, and the fact that there is a bit of subjectivity in discerning this perimeter, cannot be used as arguments against the canon. The canon is not purely arbitrary and subjective.
The task, then, is this: to honor the canon by exploring it and allowing it to nurture critical thought, and in the process, to discover the hidden riches of the obscure neglected corners of the canon.
