ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the aesthetic content of works of art by appealing to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, and particularly the aesthetic theory of Theodor Adorno. It provides an exposition of those aspects of his theory that are most relevant to the literary canon, with specific attention to the critical role of art in modern capitalist societies. The chapter demonstrates how the explicitly political justifications for revising the canon, as well as the instrumental applications of works of art in general, can be subject to a dialectical and materialist critique. It examines a notion of canonical change that is implicit to Adorno's and Walter Benjamin's theories of art. Modern characteristics are discernible in the content and form of the poems, whose style exposes the spurious abstractions of aesthetic idealism. The judgment of aesthetic content is therefore not simply subjective, arbitrary, or culturally relative— a matter of "taste", ephemeral social and intellectual fashions, or the timely strategies of cultural politics.
