WL101:Writing in World Literature

1. What is literature?
2. What constitutes world literature?
3. How do we define the canon of literature?
4. Who preserves & alters the canon?
5. The canon debate
6. Canon wars & counter-canons
7. Why does it matter what—or who—is included
in the canon?
8. How to read so that we problematize the canon.
1. What is literature?
2. What constitutes world literature?
3. How do we define “the canon of literature”?
In recent decades the phrase
“literary canon” has come to
designate—in world literature, or
in European literature, but most
frequently in a national
literature—those authors who, by
a cumulative consensus of critics,
scholars, and teachers, have come
to be widely recognized as
“major,” and to have written works
often hailed as literary classics.
 At any time, the boundaries of a literary
canon remain indefinite, while inside those
boundaries some authors are central and others
are more marginal.
4. Who preserves & alters a literary canon?

Initiators: Mediators: Consumers:

the authors of texts; editors; marketers; readers
publishers; teachers;
critics; theorists;
journalists and
other writers; online
book reviews
 5. The canon debate
What is the canon built around?
(artistic excellence or political power?)
The debate about canon
formation centers on the question
of how the canon is built: namely,
whether the canon has been
determined not by artistic
excellence but more by the
politics of power. As a result it is
claimed that the works in a
traditional Western canon sustain
racism and patriarchal,
Imperialistic, or Eurocentric rule.
The demand is to “open the canon” to so-called minorities (or those who are
marginalized along lines of identity: ethnicity, economics, gender, or sexuality).

We will focus on many characters this semester who will find themselves
marginalized and alienated along these lines, including Mollie Mathewson in the
Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story “If I Were a Man” that we will be reading today.

Mollie puts herself into her husband’s shoes in early 20th Century America, and in
doing so explores the gender roles and norms present at the time that dictated not
only how a woman could behave or dress, but also how she was encouraged and
seen to think. In doing so, she undermines the patriarchal society (a society
dominated by men through the justification of perceived gender differences and
stereotypes) in which she lives.
 6. Canon wars & counter-canons
“Canon wars” is a media term for what is generally portrayed as

“a battle between cultural

conservatives who defend a
literary tradition of texts written by
‘dead white European males’ ...

...and so-called radicals who attack

the conservative ideal of the Western
literary canon as a way of espousing
writers who have been ignored or
rejected by that canon”
(The Critical Tradition 1535).
 The question long debated by
academic and critics is: how to
incorporate and include new voices
(or different/diverse perspectives)
into the canon?
 How does the canon need to change?
Change the “traditional canon”
• Recognize the historical bias
toward (usually) dead, white
males
• Change the canon to incorporate
the greatest works of literature
no matter the ethnicity, language,
religion, sex, gender or sexual
orientation of the author
• Cons: will it still have a natural
bias toward male, white or
western authors?
• Are there too many great texts
for one single canon?
Create multiple “counter-canons”
based on a shared sense of identity
between authors
• Allows the recognition of more
authors (for example, a canon of
Canadian literature, or a canon of
First Nations literature, or even
Chinese-Canadian literature)
• Cons: Will it create
marginalization by dividing
literature up into categories?
• Will counter-canons just be seen
as subordinate to the traditional
western canon?
“It is really the more recent canon that the struggle is about, the
unstable edges where new membership is still being issued”

(Roberto González Echevarría--currently the Sterling Professor of

Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale University)
7. Why does it matter what—and
who—is included in the canon?
“Acceptance into
the canon is and
always has been a
political decision that
can be influenced by
interest groups with
social and cultural
agendas [...]”
(Barbara Hernstein Smith 1531).
 8. Reading so that we
problematize the canon:
In other words:
• interrogating ideas—ask
questions!
• questioning or undermining
assumptions
• re-appropriating, re-writing, &
re-defining
• supporting your opinions with
material found in close-
reading
• valuing individual perspectives
Your participation grade will be based on ...
• Buying all the books (the bookstore was late in acquiring the booklist for our
course, but they should be here by the end of next week. Books will run out
fairly quickly, so try to get in there as soon as you can) Books are sent back to
the publisher mid-semester, so do not wait until then.
• Doing the readings ahead & having questions or notes ready for class
discussion/group work.
• Completing readings--which are available listed by week in the reading
schedule (in today’s handout and also available on Moodle)
• Bringing the appropriate books: If you do not bring the appropriate books to
class and you have not read them it will affect your participation mark (which
is 15% of your entire grade).
• Writing Quizzes (Quiz marks will obviously reflect how well you’ve read)
• Logging onto Moodle & reviewing lectures on Moodle. An added bonus in
reviewing: Just giving yourself 15 minutes of review time (once a week) will
help you understand the main ideas of the course for writing the mid-term,
the major paper, and the final.