Scholars find themselves tasked with creating a literary canon. While we don't like to prize one work of art over another, let's be honest. We have to acknowledge what really 'counts' as a judgment call to what we teach and discuss in schools. This question has historically accepted older books as having 'stood the test of time' and therefore worthy of our scrutiny both as primary documents of a bygone society and a literary work. More recently, however, modernists don't see why we should discredit all recently published books from being considered 'real' literature. Communications specialists notice an ongoing trend that people consistently value traditional methods over new ones. Are we willing to not be a part of literature history by ignoring our own era's masterpieces?
You can see the same question crop up in the Reformation. Sola Scriptura was the watch cry. A major difference between denominations of religion is what they consider canon- just Genesis (Muslims), just the Old Testament (Jews), just the Gospels (non-Pauline Christians), the Bible (most Christians), or the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the Doctrine and Covenants, and anything that comes up in Conference or Official Statements (yeah, we kind of broke the whole canon thing...)? By deciding what counts, we determine what we value
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It's definitely true that sola scriptura is still a watch cry to this day. People romanticize the old as this unquestionable standard and seem to reject anything new until it is "canonized". I think that this may start to decline in the digital age with so much need for novelty and challenging of the system going on.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an interesting point. I honestly thing it's just easier to focus on texts that have "withstood the test of time" because there are fewer of them. I would love to get involved in modern literature, but I have no idea where to start, who to be looking at. There are so many books being published all the time, sifting through them all to determine which ones should be studied has become nearly impossible.
ReplyDeleteYour last question requires that we ask how we determine what counts. Do we individually decide that? Do state or federal governments? Does each school board determine that or each teacher? I feel like in high school we studied a lot of literature from previous times in literature and English classes, but the current literature of our era was at my disposal to read at my leisure time.
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