Confronting Our Canons: Spanish and Latin American Studies in the 21st Century (review)

This is a timely and illuminating book. The canon has a nebulous existence, since most of us refer to it, affirming or contesting it, but few can say with any precision or authority what it contains. Joan Brown set out to find an answer by gathering information about graduate reading lists, which sensibly can be seen as including those works considered fundamental, that is, canonical, for anyone receiving advanced degrees in departments of Spanish and Latin American studies. The results are well organized, framed by a preliminary discussion about the history of literary canons, a description of results culled for Spanish and Latin American studies in two different periods (1998, when there were 56 leading PhD granting institutions considered, and ten years later, when only 49 continued offering the degree), a discussion about the many gaps of these requirements, and a consideration of what may help to place a work in these lists. The book concludes with a well-argued call for action to insure the readings are more comprehensive, less idiosyncratic, and better coordinated across the profession.

The historical survey shows that canons emerged when the number of possible works to consider far surpassed any reader's possibilities, a condition that today is more drastic than ever with the addition of new media and easier access and publication in the internet. The main purpose of canons has been pedagogical, since students (and professors) cannot read all existing material, even if they have to make pronouncements about vast areas and materials only partly glimpsed, such as the novel in the last five centuries or lyric poetry since the dawn of times. Only a collective trust in the decanting of the ages allows us not to become paralyzed by the realization of our personal ignorance, even as we all know these skeletal tracings are also an invitation for us to expand and question them. Canons, in plural as Brown reminds us wisely in her title, are useful, necessary, and here to stay, at least in the context of graduate instruction.

Since not all lists are published in the Internet, up to now, faculty in individual departments have had to rely on their sense of what the profession considers essential and students can master in a few years. This book changes the situation, by providing an overview of what graduate programs are actually requesting, and, not surprisingly, there are some selections that repeat themselves across the country. Brown classifies them in several categories: the core canon (works which appear in 100 percent of lists, plus those who make it into 90 to 99 percent), nearly core canon (76 to 89 percent), and the marginal canon (50 to 75 percent). The supreme core comprises two works, the Lazarillo and Don Quijote, plus an author, Galdós (with different novels selected). For those readers from other areas who may find this book nevertheless very useful, Brown provides a brief description of these canonical works and authors. Almost universally chosen were, not surprisingly, the Cantar de Mio Cid, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, the Libro de buen amor, La Celestina, El burlador de Sevilla, La vida es sueño, El Buscón, some of Larra's Artículos de costumbres, and as the lone representative of Latin American literature, Cien años de soledad. The core canon also included twenty other authors, but with different works stipulated. Here too, most were Peninsular with only Vallejo, Neruda, and Borges from Latin America.

What becomes evident is that the number of works is minuscule, heavily tilted towards Spain, and that they reveal the gaps that Brown diagnoses, principally in gender (mostly male authors of texts ruled only by normative heterosexuality), language (almost all Spanish, where one would expect also Catalan and other languages spoken in Spain and Latin America), historical periods (the whole 18th...