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This book is part of a series which moves the canon debate of the 1980s forward into a new multidisciplinary and cross-cultural phase by investigating problems of canon formation across the whole humanistic field. Some volumes explore the linguistic, political or anthropological dimensions of canonicity. Others examine the historical canons of individual disciplines. The important contribution to the canon debate is remarkable in examining the actual process of canon formation from three unusual and complementary angles. The first two chapters discuss historical attitudes to canons from antiquity onwards, showing the religious, aesthetic, cultural and political interests which have shaped our modern critical canons. Each of the four succeeding chapters examines an exemplary modern defendant, interpreter, or critic of canons: Ernst Gombrich, Northrop Frye, Frank Kermode, and Edward Said. A final chapter considers the origins and rationale of the contemporary debate, emphasizing the disciplinary and aesthetic problems we must confront if our cultural institutions are to meet the changing needs of the next century.>
List of contents
Series Editor's Preface
Foreward
Introduction: The Canon Debate
More than Just a Rule: The Early History of the Canon
A Whole World of Reading: The Modern History of the Canon
Sir Ernst Gombrich and the Functionalist Canon
Northrop Frye and the Visionary Canon
Frank Kermode and the Canon of Interpretation
Edward Said and the Open Canon
Conclusion - Cultural Studies: Towards a New Canon?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Professor Jan Gorak teaches at he University of Denver. His publications include God the Artist (1987), Critic of Crisis (1987) and The Alien Mind of Raymond Williams (1988).
