ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two major sociological approaches to literary canon formation: Pierre Bourdieu's and John Guillory's. An analysis of Bourdieu's theory of cultural production will show that the reproduction and prestige of canonical works depends on a process of cultural familiarization that in turn depends on social confirmation and broad institutionalization. John Guillory's work on canon formation is perhaps the most extensive and systematically developed. The chapter examines Guillory's alternative theory of the social significance of literary canons and its shortcomings. It considers the ways in which canonization as a form of cultural reproduction may also reinforce the status quo by reproducing social relations. In particular, sociological conceptions of the aesthetic find that to distinguish qualitatively between canonical and non-canonical works, or between art and aesthetic experience in general, is always and necessarily ideological for mystifying social relations in the name of detached "judgment".
