Debating the Canon: A Reader from Addison to Nafisi

1. Introduction: “The Canon Brawl: Arguments over the Canon”
Lee Morrissey

2. Joseph Addison (1672–1719) from The Tatler, No. 108 (Thursday, December 15, to Saturday, December 17, 1709)
Lee Morrissey

3. David Hume (1711–1776) from “Of the Standard of Taste,” Essays (1757)
Lee Morrissey

4. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) from “Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare” (1765)
Lee Morrissey

5. Red Jacket (c.1750–1830) “Why not all agree, as you can all read the book?” from a speech to the Boston Missionary Society (1828)
Lee Morrissey

6. Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) from “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” Essays in Criticism (1865)
Lee Morrissey

7. T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Sacred Wood (1919)
Lee Morrissey

8. F.R. Leavis (1895–1978) from Mass Civilization and Minority Culture (1933)
Lee Morrissey

9. Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) “Reading and the Growth of the Mind,” How to Read a Book (1940)
Lee Morrissey

10. Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) from “Odysseus’ Scar,” Mimesis (1946; trans. 1953)
Lee Morrissey

11. Leo Strauss (1899–1973) from “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)
Lee Morrissey

12. Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) from “On National Culture,” Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Lee Morrissey

13. Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) from “Commitment: The Politics of Autonomous Art,” New Left Review (1962)
Lee Morrissey

14. Chinua Achebe (1930–) “Colonialist Criticism,” Hopes and Impediments (1974, 1988)
Lee Morrissey

15. Elaine Showalter (1941–) from “The Female Tradition,” A Literature of Their Own (1977)
Lee Morrissey

16. Annette Kolodny (1941–) from “A Map for Rereading: Or, Gender and the Interpretation of Literary Texts,” New Literary History (1980)
Lee Morrissey

17. Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) from “The Field of Cultural Production, Or: The Economic World Reversed,” The Field of Cultural Production (1983)
Lee Morrissey

18. William J. Bennett (1943–) from “To Reclaim a Legacy,” American Education (1985)
Lee Morrissey

19. Elizabeth Meese (1943–) from “Sexual Politics and Critical Judgment,” in Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller, Eds., After Strange Texts (1985)
Lee Morrissey

20. Jane Tompkins (1940–) from “ ‘But Is It Any Good?’: The Institutionalization of Literary Value,” Sensational Designs (1985)
Lee Morrissey

21. Martin Bernal (1937–) from “Volume I: Introduction,” Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987)
Lee Morrissey

22. Allan Bloom (1936–1992) “The Student and the University,” The Closing of the American Mind (1987)
Lee Morrissey

23. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (1928–) from “Rise of the Fragmented Curriculum,” Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987)
Lee Morrissey

24. Frank Kermode (1919–) from “Canon and Period,” History and Value (1988)
Lee Morrissey

25. Barbara Herrnstein Smith (1932–) from “Contingencies of Value,” Contingencies of Value (1988)
Lee Morrissey

26. Arnold Krupat (1941–) from “The Concept of the Canon,” The Voice in the Margin (1989)
Lee Morrissey

27. Charles Altieri (1942–) from “An Idea and Ideal of Literary Canon,” Canons and Consequences (1990)
Lee Morrissey

28. Alvin Kernan (1923–) from “Introduction: The Death of Literature,” Death of Literature (1990)
Lee Morrissey

29. Roger Kimball (1953–) from “Speaking Against the Humanities,” Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education (1990; rev. 1998)
Lee Morrissey

30. Paul Lauter (1932–) from “Canon Theory and Emergent Practice,” Canons and Contents (1991)
Lee Morrissey

31. Katha Pollitt (1949–) “Why We Read: Canon to the Right of Me …,” The Nation (1991)
Lee Morrissey

32. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1950–) from “The Master’s Pieces: On Canon Formation and the African-American Tradition,” Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992)
Lee Morrissey

33. Gerald Graff (1937–) from “Introduction: Conflict in America,” Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (1992)
Lee Morrissey

34. John Guillory from “Preface” and “Canonical and Noncanonical: The Current Debate,” Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (1993)
Lee Morrissey

35. Vassilis Lambropoulos (1953–) from “The Rites of Interpretation,” The Rise of Eurocentrism (1993)
Lee Morrissey

36. Edward Said (1935–2003) from “Connecting Empire to Secular Interpretation,” Culture and Imperialism (1994)
Lee Morrissey

37. Michael Bérubé (1961–) from “Higher Education and American Liberalism,” Public Access (1994)
Lee Morrissey

38. Harold Bloom (1930–) from “An Elegy for the Canon,” The Western Canon: The Books and the School of Ages (1994)
Lee Morrissey

39. Jacques Derrida (1930–) from “To Whom To Give To,” The Gift of Death (1992, trans. 1995)
Lee Morrissey

40. Marjorie Garber (1944–) from “Greatness,” Symptoms of Culture (1998)
Lee Morrissey

41. Richard Rorty (1931–) from “On The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature,” Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (1998)
Lee Morrissey

42. Robert Scholes (1929–) from “A Flock of Cultures: A Trivial Proposal,” The Rise and Fall of English (1998)
Lee Morrissey

43. Azar Nafisi (1950–) from Sections 16, 17, 18, and 19 of Part II, “Gatsby,” Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2002)
Lee Morrissey

Keywords: Literature, Literary Theory, Literary History, Higher Education, Structural Geology