Redeeming the Canon: Transdisciplinary Collocations

• Published in: Linguaculture (Iași) Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 11 - 28
• Main Author: Nicolau, Felix
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Press 10.06.2019
• Subjects: canon; communication; digital literature; General Literary studies (including Literary Theory); Humaniora och konst; Humanities and the Arts; Languages and Literature; Litteraturvetenskap (Här ingår: Litteraturteori); media; Performatism; Språk och litteratur
• ISSN: 2067-9696; 2285-9403; 2285-9403
• DOI: 10.47743/lincu-2019-1-0131

The canon in the English speaking world has been remolded under the influence of later developments in technology and media. Posthumanism and Communication and Performance Studies push forward the demythization – initiated by the Cultural Studies – of the aesthetic isolationism of the New Criticism. The new developments do not dispute the primacy of the aesthetic/truthful criteria used for informing the canon, but they disclose the fact that we cannot ignore the complexity of contemporary society. My study envisages new approaches in selecting items for the new arch-canon, with reference to specialized canons and also personal canons. How much is utopia and how much is dystopia in building an arch-canon in the English speaking world? Can we create a canon which will serve pure communicative purposes instead of the customary colonialist ones? The canon is subject to fashion too, but fashions know inner delimitations. Every time a certain fashion is resurrected, it displays new encodings, too, superposed to the old ones. Nothing in history has been resumed between the same coordinates. A trustworthy canon cumulates many fashions and combines them into a multi-discourse super-fashion. But, in the end, the canon cannot contest the perishable ingredient in its composition. Even Harold Bloom acknowledged that when he selected only twenty-six writers to support his point of view. What raises the canon above the run-of-the-mill fashion is that it never wanes entirely; it simply substitutes some of its components, modernising its structure. The canon is an ever-lasting system endowed with the ability to eliminate and draft values in accordance with cultural imperatives. At the same time, the survivalist representation of the canon is limited, as its main mission is to safeguard and propose values. That is why the canon has to be formed with an eye to the updated chart of values; otherwise it would completely miss its momentum and power of influence.