ABSTRACT
This chapter moves from the domain of perception to the domain of the perpetuation of literary works and presents the outline of a mnemonic understanding of literary canon formation. First, let’s defi ne canonicity as the measure of how often a text is read, reread, mentioned, cited, and analyzed over a historically signifi cant slice of time: that is, as a measure of textual recurrence or reproducibility within a culture. Duration is important here because synchronically it will always be the lyrics of popular hits that recur most often. Canonicity, however, is a popularity that is historically enduring: “canonical works are the bestsellers of historical majorities” (Nemoianu 1991, 232). Even the elite texts of the canon will in the endhistorically-claim a wider readership than mass literature.1 The length of the text is not important; in fact, the mechanism of canonicity is more clearly evident when what becomes subject to the forces of cultural reproduction is a minimal fragment-a stanza, a line, or even a phrase. Thus, Shakespeare is more canonical than Marlowe, and Hamlet more so than Coriolanus; Hamlet’s monologue in Act 3, Scene 1 is more canonical than his other monologues in the play, and “To be or not to be” is the monologue’s most canonical line.
