Thank you. One challenge for the imagination of abundance is the reality of limits, which is a central conservative thesis. If a semester, or a bookshelf, or a year in reading, only has space to accommodate X number of texts, some must be included and some must be excluded. That doesn't predetermine which are included and which are excluded, but the program of "inclusion" frequently fails to reckon with this basic challenge.
One hypothesis is that, if canon revision is being made for artistic reasons (not political reasons), there should be more movement around the margins of the canon, than around the center. I.e., the artistic case for replacing Updike with Morrison is stronger than the artistic case for replacing Shakespeare with Morrison.
All of these conversations are worth having. We have to consider what our goals are. If education is, as Socrates said, learning to love what is beautiful, then we may be able to inspire Shakespeare students to love Morrison and likewise readers of Morrison to love Shakespeare. We can choose what will be the center of our course. I usually go with an enduring question, such as "What is the right relationship between an individual and society?" or "What is Justice?" and then choose my great texts in conversation with the question. This approach frees me from attempting an impossible breadth and the loss of depth, while also overcoming political agenda in creating my syllabus. If it is a course dedicated to Ancients, why not include Simone Weil's essay on Homer as a way for us to include women in the dialogue with the central Greek texts etc.? There are lots of ways to make this happen if our end is love.
I am shocked, I tell you, shocked…to learn about the possibility of imperialist undercurrents in Russian literature. Next thing you know they’ll be saying that A Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis has some racial undercurrents about “brown people” not to mention that “problematic” Huckleberry Finn book.
Ask yourself this: would the New Yorker have published this 10 years ago? It’s not like this literature is hot off this press. This is just “literary criticism” in service of virtue signaling.
“Thoughtful engagement” completely misses the point.
Hello, new reader here! This piece is delightfully thought provoking. I did not study English literature, but do read as widely as I can. I did study music however and see some parallels as a piano teacher. Loving the works of Joplin and seeking out the works of Clara Schumann does not make me love Bach any less. As I assign pieces I must always ask myself those big questions of what skills are my students learning? I don’t think I could teach a pianist without including Bach, but if a student doesn’t play him one year in favour of expanding the canon, I think they may be well served. I am lucky in that I mentor students for a long time in their education and can make those choices with them.
I think canon is important. I'm a great books professor. If I was a piano teacher, I think I'd stress Bach. But, it doesn't mean there are not other musicians that are as great--Duke Ellington, for instance. What I'd want to consider is not just skills but great content. The problem is that we have too often shared the biases of the past and ignored the best that has been thought and said from writers of color and women. I wouldn't ever include a writer based on gender or skin color, but if there work is great, and we're ignoring them because the past prejudiced their skin color and gender, then we're missing out. Does that make sense? I do think we should encourage our students to taste what is most beautiful!
Absolutely. A greater diversity will result from seeking out beauty in good faith. In my experience, I have to seek out the composers from marginalized groups because that is where the gaps are in my education. I also accept that I could never create the perfect list of repertoire and believe that we need each others’ different educational backgrounds.
Very thought provoking questions, though I do worry that "expanding" the canon is a slower version of replacing it. As you note in the way someone currently very concerned and negatively inclined against the actions of the current Russian government reading the works of Russian authors from hundreds of years ago through their current lens, I see too many of those advocating for expansion reading the "dead white men" with the same hostility, and I think that's no more profitable. Not that you yourself are doing that here, necessarily, but the voices advocating doing so are very loud, and nuance can be lost when standing next to a loudspeaker.
The long-standing influence of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare is impossible (and senseless) to replace. Influence is part of the rubric for what is included in our canon, but not the ONLY category. If we care about what is good, we should reclaim Julian of Norwich, for instance. Also, some writers may have had influence that has been forgotten. Remember in the Old Testament when the Israelites rediscovered the Torah (2 Kings 22)! Now that we are searching for these voices that were ignored, we may find they had influence that was hidden. For instance, Edith Stein edited Husserl, but Heidegger claimed authorship because women could not be professors. Or, further back, Meditations on the Life of Christ was thought to be written by a Franciscan monk because it was in Latin; now we've discovered the Italian original, which was likely written by a Sister of Clare of Assisi (since it's in the vulgar language). Etc. These examples abound. They don't threaten the canon. They add to it!
I think addition is good, but time isn't infinite in education, so expansion practically does seem to mean replacement. I'm not against updating and changing things, but I am deeply concerned that the voices which seem to be loudest are not yours, who do still clearly value the canon, but instead those who either want to forget everything except a (almost certainly false) memory of the past, or those who want to destroy everything except what agrees with the long arc of progressive history.
Love the framing of canon as abundance.
That’s Kingdom thinking!
Thank you!
Amen
Thank you. One challenge for the imagination of abundance is the reality of limits, which is a central conservative thesis. If a semester, or a bookshelf, or a year in reading, only has space to accommodate X number of texts, some must be included and some must be excluded. That doesn't predetermine which are included and which are excluded, but the program of "inclusion" frequently fails to reckon with this basic challenge.
One hypothesis is that, if canon revision is being made for artistic reasons (not political reasons), there should be more movement around the margins of the canon, than around the center. I.e., the artistic case for replacing Updike with Morrison is stronger than the artistic case for replacing Shakespeare with Morrison.
All of these conversations are worth having. We have to consider what our goals are. If education is, as Socrates said, learning to love what is beautiful, then we may be able to inspire Shakespeare students to love Morrison and likewise readers of Morrison to love Shakespeare. We can choose what will be the center of our course. I usually go with an enduring question, such as "What is the right relationship between an individual and society?" or "What is Justice?" and then choose my great texts in conversation with the question. This approach frees me from attempting an impossible breadth and the loss of depth, while also overcoming political agenda in creating my syllabus. If it is a course dedicated to Ancients, why not include Simone Weil's essay on Homer as a way for us to include women in the dialogue with the central Greek texts etc.? There are lots of ways to make this happen if our end is love.
I am shocked, I tell you, shocked…to learn about the possibility of imperialist undercurrents in Russian literature. Next thing you know they’ll be saying that A Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis has some racial undercurrents about “brown people” not to mention that “problematic” Huckleberry Finn book.
Ask yourself this: would the New Yorker have published this 10 years ago? It’s not like this literature is hot off this press. This is just “literary criticism” in service of virtue signaling.
“Thoughtful engagement” completely misses the point.
Hello, new reader here! This piece is delightfully thought provoking. I did not study English literature, but do read as widely as I can. I did study music however and see some parallels as a piano teacher. Loving the works of Joplin and seeking out the works of Clara Schumann does not make me love Bach any less. As I assign pieces I must always ask myself those big questions of what skills are my students learning? I don’t think I could teach a pianist without including Bach, but if a student doesn’t play him one year in favour of expanding the canon, I think they may be well served. I am lucky in that I mentor students for a long time in their education and can make those choices with them.
I think canon is important. I'm a great books professor. If I was a piano teacher, I think I'd stress Bach. But, it doesn't mean there are not other musicians that are as great--Duke Ellington, for instance. What I'd want to consider is not just skills but great content. The problem is that we have too often shared the biases of the past and ignored the best that has been thought and said from writers of color and women. I wouldn't ever include a writer based on gender or skin color, but if there work is great, and we're ignoring them because the past prejudiced their skin color and gender, then we're missing out. Does that make sense? I do think we should encourage our students to taste what is most beautiful!
Haha I just read my comment and meant to look up the spelling for Joplin. I got distracted by my little kids!
Absolutely. A greater diversity will result from seeking out beauty in good faith. In my experience, I have to seek out the composers from marginalized groups because that is where the gaps are in my education. I also accept that I could never create the perfect list of repertoire and believe that we need each others’ different educational backgrounds.
Very thought provoking questions, though I do worry that "expanding" the canon is a slower version of replacing it. As you note in the way someone currently very concerned and negatively inclined against the actions of the current Russian government reading the works of Russian authors from hundreds of years ago through their current lens, I see too many of those advocating for expansion reading the "dead white men" with the same hostility, and I think that's no more profitable. Not that you yourself are doing that here, necessarily, but the voices advocating doing so are very loud, and nuance can be lost when standing next to a loudspeaker.
The long-standing influence of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare is impossible (and senseless) to replace. Influence is part of the rubric for what is included in our canon, but not the ONLY category. If we care about what is good, we should reclaim Julian of Norwich, for instance. Also, some writers may have had influence that has been forgotten. Remember in the Old Testament when the Israelites rediscovered the Torah (2 Kings 22)! Now that we are searching for these voices that were ignored, we may find they had influence that was hidden. For instance, Edith Stein edited Husserl, but Heidegger claimed authorship because women could not be professors. Or, further back, Meditations on the Life of Christ was thought to be written by a Franciscan monk because it was in Latin; now we've discovered the Italian original, which was likely written by a Sister of Clare of Assisi (since it's in the vulgar language). Etc. These examples abound. They don't threaten the canon. They add to it!
I think addition is good, but time isn't infinite in education, so expansion practically does seem to mean replacement. I'm not against updating and changing things, but I am deeply concerned that the voices which seem to be loudest are not yours, who do still clearly value the canon, but instead those who either want to forget everything except a (almost certainly false) memory of the past, or those who want to destroy everything except what agrees with the long arc of progressive history.