... to the biblical canon. The word originates from kanon' a Greek word meaning instrument of measure and has developed to connote a list of important authors and their works, concerned with sorting the "orthodox from the heretical- . If this metaphor is applied to the literary canon it would suggest, sorting ... surely subjective. It must be the same for literary works too, there is no necessity to ascribe to the commonly held viewpoints on authors and their works, yet it is not easy to escape their stronghold over literature. Certain texts are indeed recognised subconsciously as belonging...

• Word Count: 2215
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Anne Tyler Well-known contemporary novelist and short story writer, Anne Tyler, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1941 to Lloyd, an industrial chemist, and Phyllis Tyler, a social worker. Soon after her birth, her family ... , although now widowed, and where many of her novels and short stories are set, especially Baltimore's Roland Park-the "epitome of upper-middle class waspdom in all its glory" (DISCovering Authors). Most of Tyler's time in Baltimore has been spent raising her two daughters, running her household, and publishing twelve more novels, a children's book, numerous short sto...

• Word Count: 834
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... more intrinsically it is a piece of writing that contains a self-referential element. The topic of metafiction in the post-modernist era of writing has certainly gained a lot of talk, but authors have long written in a way as to make the reader take an introspective and self-conscience look at their work. Don Quixote, and even Shakespeare's Hamlet, have been labeled as ... order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality" (2). The gray area then becomes how to differentiate classical writing that contains elements of self-reflexivity from post-modernist contemp...

• Word Count: 1165
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate