The literary canon is an exclusive list where the best classics are celebrated and revered for eternity.
Admission to the canon is like being granted sainthood for books.
But what exactly is this canon, and who decides what makes the list?
Is there even an actual list?
This standard can be problematic
Literary Canon?
The literary canon is part of the larger “canon,” which is a list of the most important, influential, or definitive works in art, literature, music, and philosophy. These works are described as “the classics,” but the two terms aren’t necessarily synonymous.
To be considered part of the canon, a book has to be more than just great and withstand the test of time; it has to be considered essential.
The term itself is derived from an ancient Greek word for a measuring rod, or standard. Books deemed worthy of entering the canon are considered standards by which all other works are measured.
It’s because of this “essential” status that most high school and university curricula consist almost exclusively of books considered to be part of the canon.
Who Decides What’s In the Canon?
Canons have been determined by “an elite group of scholars and critics who embraced a work of art and sent it aloft to some deifying realm.”
The canon is intended to represent our collective idea of which books you need to know in order to have a high-quality, well-rounded education.
It doesn’t take the form of a specific list until high schools, universities, critics, or respected institutions determine their own canons.
The canon is subjective and determined by a select few, and while controversies exist, many decisions are obvious.
Agreement that The Great Gatsby is worthy of being in the canon, while Fifty Shades of Grey, however much you may love it, is not.
A book can be enjoyable, and even well written, but that’s not enough to qualify it as “essential.”
What Books Are Part of the Literary Canon?
The literary canon includes writers from ancient times all the way through the late-twentieth century.
In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom published The Western Canon, in which he names 26 “immortal” authors, including Homer, Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf.
Of course, his choices sparked a lot of debate, especially about who gets to decide what’s considered worthy of canonization.
In a series of appendices, Bloom lists hundreds of other authors that he considers canonical (he later said his editors insisted on including the extended list; he wasn’t really for it).
Canons are easier to define when looking at specific time period or place (19th century North America)—and that’s usually how they’re studied.
In high school and college, there was probably an American Lit class, where you studied the works of Hawthorne, Twain, and Fitzgerald; a World Lit class that introduced you to writers from Europe or South America.
Other niche courses, where you may have studied a specific time period, literary theme, or movement.
Below are some books generally considered part of the literary canon:
The Odyssey by Homer (750 BC)
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320)
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1400)
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
Ulysses by James Joyce (1920)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
1984 by George Orwell (1949)
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
Debate Over the Canon
Though they didn’t realize it, the earliest canonizers in the U.S. were the professional educators who planned the curricula for the first literature classes, which began in the late nineteenth century.
Many educators who helped select works for those early textbooks were also clergymen—usually older, almost always white, clergymen.
Most of the texts studied in secondary and post-secondary schools are written by white men
This might give the impression that only white men are capable of writing canonical works.
But the reality is that the people who have been in charge of deciding the curriculum looked like those authors they chose, whether they were consciously biased or not. (women and Black Americans couldn’t even vote, much less help decide school standards.)
White male authors should not be removed from the canon, but what constitutes the canon needs to be updated and expanded.
Some expansion and reassessment did take place in the twentieth century, and authors like Toni Morrison are now taught in high school literature classes and considered part of the canon, but there is still a long way to go if we want our notion of classic, essential works to reflect the diversity of great literature that is produced each year.
Honoring the Classics
While it’s certainly faced its fair share of criticism, I’d argue that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of having a literary canon.
It’s still seen by some as a mark of snobbish, elitist preferences, but there are standards that determine the best of pretty much everything—from films to food—and a distinction between what’s “good” and “bad” and “mediocre” is necessary for all artists to grow.
What’s important is that our standards reflect the diverse body of authors creating a wide variety of outstanding works, and not just one type of writer or one type of story.
