The making of the English literary canon : from the Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century / Trevor Ross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ross, Trevor Thornton, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canon (Literature)--History and criticism.

Canon (Literature).

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Criticism--Great Britain--History.

Criticism.

Physical Description:

x, 400 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, c1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

An indigenous canon of letters, Ross argues, had been both the hope and aim of English authors since the Middle Ages. Early authors believed that promoting the idea of a national literature would help publicize their work and favour literary production in the vernacular. Ross places these early gestures toward canon-making in the context of the highly rhetorical habits of thought that dominated medieval and Renaissance culture, habits that were gradually displaced by an emergent rationalist understanding of literary value. He shows that, beginning in the late seventeenth century, canon-makers became less concerned with how English literature was produced than with how it was read and received.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Versions of Canonic Harmony

Early Gestures

Consequences of Presentism

Albion’s Parnassus and the Professional Author

The Uses of the Dead

Defining a Cultural Field

Value into Knowledge

The Fall of Apollo

Consumption and Canonic Hierarchy

Reading the Canon

A Basis for Criticism

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Revision of the author's dissertation (Ph. D.--University of Toronto, 1988).

Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-381) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85489-5

9786612854897

0-7735-6699-6

OCLC:

929121687