Issues of the Canon: Introduction

??? COHPAnATIST ISSUES OFTHE CANON: INTRODUCTION Mary Ann Frese Witt As I write from Italy, the ideological issues concerning literary study that have preoccupied us in North America over the past couple of decades and that we have grouped together under the term "canon" seem very far away. Here, in spite ofimpending European unity and fierce debate over issues ofimmigration, the traditional study ofUterature in the schools and universities seems to have remained largely untouched. Thus while ItaUan academics have displayed increased interest in women , ethnic, and dialectic writers, ItaUan middle school students continue to read, slowly and in depth, the same celebrated cantos of La divina commedia along with the other classics of Italian literature which are deemed to have formed their cultural and linguistic heritage. The only scholastic debate at present is over how much Latin and Greek should continue to be taught in the various types of licei. Even in the nation that gave us structuralism, deconstructionism, and the rest, lycée students continue to study the classic texts oftheir literary history century by century, along with the works of antiquity that informed them. In our own schools, on the contrary, once-foundational authors such as Shakespeare or Emerson are, as it were, up for grabs, and the whole notion ofan Anglo-American cultural and linguistic heritage, and more generally of a Western European one, has been put severely into question . Perhaps because we are a nation of immigrants, we have been able to embrace the notion of the "globalization" of literary study as well as the inclusion of texts representing diversity more easily. (We have also, at last, begun to recognize the cultural importance of the only nonimmigrant portion of our population.) But this "opening of the canon," as we have chosen to call it (pouring new wine into the bottle of an old term), has created upheavals in the curricula ofour schools and universities . If the academic "canon wars" so much in evidence in the early 1990s have considerably subsided, the issues they raised are far from resolved. The start ofa new century seems a good time to reassess where we are and where we are going with the "canon" issue, in both practical and theoretical terms. I have thus asked three colleagues with considerable experience ofthe issue to contribute essays from their various perspectives, and have concluded the "cluster" with one of my own. Wendell Harris writes from the viewpoint of a professor of English long involved in both the theoretical and practical implications of the canon wars. He correctly points out that the uses and connotations ofthe term "canon" continue to be various and that clarification is essential before debate can begin. Thus he proposes to distinguish the "official" canon (books generally accorded cultural importance in a society) from Vol. 24 (2000): 5 ISSUES OF THE CANON: INTRODUCTION the "critical" and "curricular" canons—respectively the works that scholars and critics write about and that teachers and professors teach. Of course the three intersect, but it is the last one that poses the major practical and pedagogical problems. Although Harris purposely limits the bulk of his essay to the problems involved in current definitions of the canon of British and American literature, many of the implications of his discussion can apply to comparative canons as well. Sampling the MLA Bibliography from 1926 to 1996, he reveals interesting trends in the emphasis, and lack thereof, put on certain authors at certain times within the critical canon. The second part of the essay deals with the expansion of minority and multicultural authors within the American canon; Harris, however, proposes the term "culturalist" as opposed to "multicultural" as more aptly descriptive of canon attackers whose agenda is to promote a particular group. While strongly advocating a truly multicultural and eventually a transcultural program, Harris raises serious questions as to whether or not this ideal can be achieved in the current climate. The real practical problem, Harris points out, is evident in the disparity between ever-expanding anthologies which have indeed become more comprehensive and multicultural and the reduced number of literature courses taken by undergraduates, including English majors. In addition, as LiUian Robinson stated in 1983, literary pantheons...