The English Literary Canon

... how and why these texts should be elevated to the ranks of the literary canon. The canon is often debated in relation to the biblical canon. For the purposes of this essay it is not strictly relevant to dwell on this comparison. However, the definitions of the two are intertwined historically because the literary canon has taken on a similar nature to the biblical canon. The word originates from kanon' a Greek word meaning ... perhaps does not have the same status in literary circles as Wuthering Heights. This is not a comment on the calibre of the writing, so much as the fact that to jo...

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

... is dystopian fiction, and it is from the genre I developed sincere admiration for George Orwell's 1984. In literature written today, the criteria for inclusion in the traditional English cannon includes the most well-known pieces of laic English literature that serve to ground the culture as a whole in both representation, and attraction. A piece of literature will be acknowledged with acceptation into a literary canon. Unfortunately, it is only when a piece ... of work is in the canon that it is legitimately analyzed. The purpose of the "canon", however, is ... ...

• Word Count: 638
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... source of material for this great work. Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of the contemporary social condition in British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon  and from Buddhism. Because of this, critics and scholars regard the poem as obscure. It was composed during a period of personal difficulty for Eliot " ... of matter and form. Eliot introduces a group of mythical characters who wander through the landscape of the poem telling their stories. Eliot was interested...

• Word Count: 4134
• Approx Pages: 17
• Grade Level: High School

... use. This basis becomes important in studying the influence Chaucer had on the English language. Therefore, what will be discussed in this paper are the major contributions Chaucer added to the English language in regards to the style he wrote in, dialect, pronunciation, spelling and grammar, borrowing of romance words, his influence as an English poet, and revolutionizing literary genres that not only depicted who Chaucer ... was and what he did for English in his time, but also had a lasting ... influences, as Edmund Spencer created his nine-line Spenserian stanza, used in the Fairie...

• Word Count: 5443
• Approx Pages: 22
• Grade Level: High School

... include: To speak sweepingly one can say, summarizing, that in antiquity and in the Renaissance, literature or letters were understood to include all writing of quality with any pretense to permanence. Literature is a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself through the course of its history. It includes works primarily artistic and also those whose ... aesthetic qualities are only secondary. The self-defining activity of the community is conducted in the light of the works, as its members have come to read them. So the prototype of literary tex...

• Word Count: 1508
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... a single reliable narrator, Eliot's masterpiece, Middlemarch, indicates the author's faith in the power to record the process of change in English provincial society. Furthermore, realism, seen as a set of literary conventions, inscribes and presents as "natural" a specific version of reality, an equation of the "real" with the material life of a commercial, industrial society. The mode focuses on interpersonal relations and the desire for social status within a society that is ... , creating a a network of parallels and contrasts. One of Eliot's main concerns is the way which the past m...

• Word Count: 6746
• Approx Pages: 27

... , there has never been any hard documented evidence found connecting Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon nor Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford to any kind of literary composition of some of the most renowned drama and verse, especially Shakespeare's canon. Edward de Vere was not a dull man of prominent background, father like son, a ruthless sexual adventurer without political consequence ... influence of early poetry of Edward de Vere as "first heir of my invention." The "Oxford Statement" document also speaks of Oxford and Shakespeare sharing the limelight with 16 others in 1589, "The A...

• Word Count: 1431
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... became mythicised as a legendary Argentinean when in truth he was little more than a criminal. Throughout his career Borges wrote many stories about the character and even wrote on a literary publication named after the poem. I mention this to emphasise the literary potency of the character which in El fin Borges adapts and completes the character's tale where Hernández left it unfinished. In El fin we begin ... , and his respect for its traditions and understanding of its future. Being of mixed lineage himself, an English grandmother, but also a noble criollo grandfather he tempers the...

• Word Count: 2130
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... say that Dickinson is unlike any toher poet. "Her compact, forceful language, characteried formally by long disruptive dashes, heavy iambic meters, and angular, imprecise rhymes, is one fo the singular literary achievements of of the nineteenth century. Her aphoristic style, whereby substantial meanings are compressed into very few words, can be daunting, but many of her best and most famous poems are comprehensible ... all at once, and lines that seemed baffling can become totally clear. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 and spent the first years of her life in Ohio....

• Word Count: 1665
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School