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L. M. Montgomery: Canon or Cultural Capital?
- University of Ottawa Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
L. M. Montgomery: Canon or Cultural Capital? HELEN SIOURBAS AN CulturalCapital: TheProblem of Literary Canon Formation, John Guillory presents his theory on the relationship between the literary canon and cultural capital. Literaryworks have a cultural capital that is fixed by the university institution. If a work is part of the canon, a canon determined by the university, it has high cultural capital. By extension , noncanonical works are those not prized by the university, so they have little value as cultural capital. Works that have a high cultural capital are exclusive and canonical, and form the backbone of a country's national identity. Guillorys ideas about the canon, cultural capital, and their relationship to the university and the public are problematic in Canada because, firstly, the question ofwhether or not Canada has what he defines as a canon is ambiguous, and, secondly, works may have a high value as cultural capital yet not be part of the institutional curriculum ofthe university. Lucy Maud Montgomery and her works are a perfect case in point. Though they are not generally taught in university settings, one would be hard-pressed to say that they have no value as cultural capital. In fact, Montgomery 's value as cultural capital is very high, and has been so for decades, though her value as institutional capital has, until recently, been quite low. Examining these discrepancies will illuminate part of the canonical situation in Canada, and the fluid position of L. M. Montgomery within the canons of Canadian literature and Canadian children's literature. 132 Before Montgomery's place in the Canadian canon can be identified , the nature of the canon must be determined. Guillory's ideas on the canon are no longer valid when viewed from a contemporary Canadian perspective. In Canada, many works and authors are clearly both canonical —that is, they are part of a university-based curriculum—and, unlike many canonical works, popular within society at large. Authors such as Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler are among those who come to mind. Thus, it is ridiculous to state, as Guillory does, that "school culture does not unify the nation culturally" (1993, 38), for, in Canada, it does. A further distinction that needs to be made when studying the canon in Canada is the difference between Canon and canon. As Robert Lecker states in Making It Real: The Canonization ofEnglish-Canadian Literature, Canadian literary history has been too short to have developed into a stable canon (1995, 55). Canada has no Canon that can compare to that of the Unites States or Great Britain. There is no set of core courses in Canadian literature that university students must take to receive their degrees in English Literature; a single survey course is often all that is required. However, there are authors and texts, chosen as representative of Canadian literature, that do tend to reappear on the university syllabus, from Wacousta to The Stone Angel. "There may be no canon," Lecker writes, "but there may be an imagined canon" (52); in other words, there may be no Canon, but there may be a canon. Only a flexible canon is truly reflective of the Canadian literary situation. The ambiguous nature of the Canadian canon also makes problematic Guillory's notion of cultural capital, since the "written works studied [which are part of the canon (1993, 86)] constitute a certain kind of cultural capital" (52). Since the dominant classes want to keep intellectual power to themselves, it is in their interest to restrict access to these canonical materials: the "limit of their dissemination, their relative exclusivity" (133) ensures their continued value. Guillory's model of canon as cultural capital is problematic when applied to Canada's literary landscape because Canada's canon has not been entirely determined by the university elite. As Lecker explains, "government, academia, and the publishing industry joined hands to create a national canon" (1995, 26). This cooperation created the New Canadian Library, which, according to Lecker, "formed this imagined tradition. [The NCL selections] influenced a generation of students, and helped to define which texts would become the subject of [44.213.75.78] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:43 GMT) 133 serious canonical inquiry during the 1960s and 1970s" (155). Because of Canada's small population, the canon had to be accessible to be profitable for the publishing industry. Furthermore, the canon was created to teach Canadians what it meant to be Canadian and to foster a sense of identity and nationalistic pride, goals...